Retired Population or Unemployed?

The Open Data Base of Iran is an innovation project aimed at collecting data related to Iran in one place and presenting it in easily accessible formats. Radio Farda, in collaboration with this institution, publishes a collection of articles. In the first chapter of the report "Household Budget Review in Urban Areas of Iran," published by the Central Bank of the Islamic Republic of Iran, information regarding employment in households residing in urban areas of the country is presented, which appears ambiguous. According to the data from this report, in 2015, more than 26% of urban households had no employed individuals; does this mean that approximately one in four households is unemployed? The answer cannot be definitively positive. This is because, on the other hand, in the employment statistics, there is a category titled "with income without work," which includes everyone from conscripts to landlords. In this article, we examine this information. A 60% increase in households without employed individuals over ten years The percentage of Iranian households without an employed individual in urban areas increased from 16.7% in 2006 to 26.4% in 2015, indicating an almost 10% increase in households where not even one employed individual exists. While the proportion of households with one employed individual remained relatively stable during this period, a decrease of about 5% was observed in households with two employed individuals, from about 20% to nearly 15%. This decrease is more pronounced in households with more than three employed individuals. In 2006, about 6% of households had three or more employed individuals, and this figure dropped to about 3% in 2015, meaning it has nearly halved. Notably, the number of individuals per household (or household size) was 4.05 in 2006, which decreased to 3.38 in 2015. Regarding employment status, individuals are divided into six groups based on their activity type: "employed," "unemployed," "student," "housewife," "other," and a category titled "with income without work." The definition of this title is as follows: those who live without employment from their pensions, such as retirees, pensioners, and individuals with income from rental properties, government stocks, participation bonds, long-term deposits, etc., are considered to have income without work. No statistics on the number of conscripts in the country are published. However, it is estimated that currently about 800,000 individuals are serving in the military, the majority of whom, given the urban and rural population composition, are naturally urban, and their average monthly salary is about 90,000 tomans. This 90,000 tomans adds these citizens to the official statistics under the "with income without work" category. This category, which incidentally occupies a significant share in the employment status section, is so broad that it can encompass many segments; only retirees or pensioners each count as an independent group, to which other cases are also added. Regardless, statistics show that the share of individuals in this category increased from about 7% in 2006 to nearly 12% in 2015, meaning it has nearly doubled. Now, it is unclear what percentage of these individuals are conscripts, what percentage are retirees, and what percentage are shareholders, etc. Who are the non-employed? Based on what has been said and considering the definition of "with income without work," there is a significant ambiguity in the reported information. Are the 26% of households with no employed individuals facing unemployment? The answer cannot be definitive. On one hand, statistics show that 12% of individuals have income without work, and on the other hand, according to the definition, this category encompasses a wide range, making it unclear how many individuals in this group are retirees, how many are landlords, etc. Furthermore, if we also consider the retirement age, in a family where a member has reached retirement age, there may be children who are of working age, and if they are employed, they should be categorized in the "one or more employed" groups; not in households without employed individuals! Nevertheless, one point is clear: even if we subtract the 12% who are "with income without work" from the number of households without employed individuals, there are still 14% of households without employed individuals. In 2015, the number of households in urban areas was estimated at 18,389,000. Now, if 14% of this number essentially have no employed individuals and do not include the "with income without work" group, it means about 2,600,000 households (considering the household size of 3.4 in urban areas, in 2015 this means nearly 9 million people in urban Iran out of about 58 million total) are directly or indirectly in this situation and have no employed individuals among them.