15 Frontier Provinces Have Highest Unemployment

RoozOnline

A week after research by some domestic news agency regarding the unemployment situation of the past year had revealed that the fifteen border provinces of the country had the highest unemployment rates in Iran, new published reports indicate that unemployment among the youth and women is also alarmingly and disproportionallyhigh in these provinces.

Eghtesad News (Economy News) last Saturday posted unemployment figures for the spring of 2015 and wrote that at first glance the employment rates in the provinces on Iran’s borders are not much different from other provinces. What is troubling however are the rates for young people and women. According to the latest figures published by Iran’s Statistical Center, unemployment across Iran in the spring of 2015 stood at 10.8% while that of provinces along the borders ranged between 7.8 to 15.6%. Kahgilueh va Bovirahmad province led the unemployment rate with the figure of 16 percent, followed by Alborz province with a rate of 15.8%. The lowest unemployment rate belonged to Kerman which stood at 5.9%.

Hassan Tayi, the deputy minister of the Cooperates, Labor and Social Welfare Ministry last Azar (November 21 to December 20) spoke of 1.7 million unemployed people in 16 provinces and revealed that unemployment was getting worse in the border provinces.

The latest research report that compared unemployment rates for the summer of 2013 with spring of 2015 indicated that just as unemployment had fallen in some provinces such as Mazandaran, it had doubled in others such as Gilan and Hormozgan, both border provinces.

According to this report, the more alarming issue was that for young people between the ages of 15 and 24, and women had the highest unemployment figures. While Hormozgan with 16.6% unemployment had the highest rate among the border provinces, its youth between 15 and 24 years of age had the highest unemployment rate of 39.4%. In other words, the unemployment rate of young people is 2.5 times higher than the average for the whole population. The provinces of Golestan, Mazandaran and Ilam are also among border provinces whose unemployment rate stood between 30 and 35%.

According to a Mehr news agency report, between the spring of 2014 and the spring of 2015 some 117 thousand individuals lost their jobs. The unemployment rate of nine provinces ranged between .2 to .4%. Government officials assert that some 755 thousand individuals had gained employment during this reporting period.

On September 15, minister of industries Mohammad-Reza Nematzadeh had said that the rate of unemployment among women was twice that of the average unemployment rate in the country, adding that some 30% of Iranian educated women remained unemployed.

Speaking to a group of senior Revolutionary Guard commanders, President Rouhani had declared that unemployment, along with economic depression, inflation, and the loosening of morals and ethics were the “dangerous enemies of the country.”