Labor Minister: Creating One Million Jobs Annually Won’t Change Unemployment Rate
Iran’s Parliament held a closed-door session on Sunday to discuss unemployment, during which the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare and the Parliamentary Research Center announced that even if one million jobs are created annually, the current unemployment rate will not change by the year 1400.
According to Mehr News Agency, citing one of the representatives whose name was not mentioned, the labor minister announced that the number of unemployed people in the country is 3.2 million.
Based on this report, Ali Rabiei stated in the session that even if one million jobs are created annually, the unemployment rate will not decrease by the year 1400.
Hassan Rouhani, President of Iran, also said hours after the Nowruz message of the Supreme Leader that 800,000 graduates enter the job market annually, and if 700,000 jobs are created annually, an additional 500,000 people will still be added to the unemployed.
Mr. Rouhani also said on November 22, 2016, in a similar warning that 1.2 million job seekers entered the job market in 2016, but the government lacks the capacity to respond to this number of applicants.
Iran’s Statistics Center announced that the unemployment rate in autumn 2016 reached 12.3 percent, which is a decrease of 0.4 percent compared to summer.
Officials of Hassan Rouhani’s government also announced that the previous government created “only 14,000” jobs.
The Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare also emphasized that according to a report from the Statistics Center, in the previous government “at best, only 75,000” job opportunities were created annually.
Officials of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s government, however, had previously announced that “eight million jobs” were created during his administration.
Meanwhile, Akbar Rangjbarzadeh, a member of the parliament’s presidium, said that the statistics announced by the Minister of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare and the Parliamentary Research Center regarding unemployment of three million people differ from each other.
He reported that the labor minister stated the unemployment rate at 3.2 million people, while the research center reported this rate as 6.5 to 7 million people.
According to Mr. Rangjbarzadeh, according to the research center’s report, if one million jobs are created annually, the current unemployment rate will continue into the year 1400.
The Parliamentary Research Center also warned in November 2016 about increasing unemployment and its consequences, announcing that by the year 1400 there will be more than four million unemployed people in the country.
Source: Radio Farda
