Kermanshah and Isfahan Top Iran's 'Misery Index'

A new report from the Statistical Center of Iran on the misery index of provinces shows that Kermanshah and Isfahan are at the top. The misery index is the sum of the inflation rate and unemployment rate, which has been used since the mid-1970s in political economy literature as a tool for measuring economic crises in countries. According to this report, the misery index in Kermanshah is about 51 percent and in Isfahan over 49 percent. Thus, the combined rates of unemployment and inflation in these two provinces this summer are higher than in other provinces. It is not exactly clear why Isfahan, an industrial region in the country, ranks second in the misery index, but the summer electricity shortage crisis and worsening water tensions in this province may be contributing factors to the rise in unemployment in the industrial and agricultural sectors, leading to a worsening of the misery index in the province. Isfahan and Yazd were also at the top of the inflation rate among the provinces this summer. The Statistical Center of Iran has reported the unemployment rate in the summer at 7.5 percent, which is a strange figure given the prevailing economic recession in the country. The drop in the unemployment rate could be due to the discouragement of a large number of unemployed individuals who have become 'inactive.' The unemployment rate is the ratio of 'unemployed' individuals to 'active' individuals (employed or job-seeking), and if someone has completely given up on work and become inactive, they are not counted as unemployed. The new report states that the number of employed individuals in the country this summer is 25 million and 129 thousand, which is only 380 thousand more than the same period in 2019, before the outbreak of COVID-19; however, during this period, four million people have reached working age, and logically, the unemployment rate in the country should have surged. In simple terms, a large portion of job seekers in the country over the past five years have become inactive due to despair in finding jobs, causing the unemployment rate to decrease from 10.5 percent to 7.5 percent.