The employment rate was reported at 37.3% (23.77 million) in the second quarter of the current Iranian year (June 22-Sept. 22) by the Statistical Center of Iran, up 0.1% compared with the same quarter of the last Iranian year.
Employment rates for men and women were 63.4% and 11.3%, respectively, which constituted 20.17 million men and 36.06 million women in Q2.
The employment rate was 36.5% (17.96 million people) in urban areas and 40.1% (5.81 million) in rural areas.
The share of employment of university graduates stood at 26.5% of the total employed population, wherein male and female graduate employment rates were 22.8% and 47.1%, respectively. In urban and rural areas, graduate employment rates stood at 32.2% and 8.8% of the total number of job-holders, respectively.
Q2 statistics show that 39.6% of the country’s labor force worked more than 49 hours per week, indicating a 1% increase over the same period of last year.
Employment is defined as persons of working age engaged in any activity to produce goods or provide services for pay or profit, whether at work during the reference period or not at work due to a temporary absence from a job, or to working-time arrangement.
The services sector employed 50.4% of the Iranian employed population (11.97 million), 1.6% higher than the corresponding period of last year, whereas industrial and agricultural sectors provided 33.8% and 15.8% of jobs respectively.
Over 8.02 million were employed in the industrial sector, unchanged year-on-year and 3.76 million worked in agriculture, posting a 1.6% decrease YOY.
The services sector consists of wholesale and retail trade; restaurants and hotels; transport, storage and communications; financing, insurance, real estate and business services; as well as community, social, education, health and personal services.
The sector employed 9.88 million men and 2.09 million women in the three-month period, such that 7.09 million men and 932,798 women worked in the industrial sector and 3.18 million men and 576,881 women were active in the agriculture sector.
Services accounted for 58.3% or 10.46 million of all jobs in urban areas and 25.9% or 1.5 million of jobs in rural areas. The industrial sector made up 35.4% or 6.32 million of the jobs in urban areas and comprised 29.3% or 1.7 million of employment in rural areas.
This is while 6.4% or 1.15 million of the total jobs in urban areas and 44.8% or 2.6 million of the jobs in rural areas were in the agriculture sector.
Zanjan registered the highest employment rate of 46.6% while Sistan-Baluchestan filed the lowest employment rate of 29.6% among all Iranian provinces.
Tehran’s employment rate stood at 34.7%.
