[R-G] Iran Suffers as a Generation Goes in Search of a Job

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

The FT complains of "over-staffing" at the government offices and
state-owned companies in Iran, citing editor of Iran Economics.  Why
not make _that_ a solution to the problem of unemployment and
under-employment, though?  What's "over-staffing" in the eyes of
neoliberals may be just the right-staffing from the POV of workers. --

Yoshie

<http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/96c66502-ced4-11dc-877a-000077b07658.html>
Iran suffers as a generation goes in search of a job

By Anna Fifield in Tehran

Published: January 30 2008 02:00 | Last updated: January 30 2008 02:00

Merhnaz thought her expensive, private university degree in economics
would be her ticket to a solid job. Instead, like hundreds of
thousands of other young Iranians, she finds herself unemployed and
unhappy.

"I've been looking for a job since graduation," says the 25-year-old,
who finished university two years ago. "I took tests to enter
government banks but I didn't succeed and I applied at the Tehran city
council but they weren't hiring."

Merhnaz, who says most of her university friends are unemployed, is
waiting to find out if she was successful in her application to be a
teacher at a private English language institute.

"I want to have a job - I'd really like to work - so naturally it's
not very pleasant not to be able to find one," she says.

Her situation is all too common in Iran, where more than two-thirds of
the population is aged under 30 and where 750,000 people enter the
labour market each year.

When Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad was elected president in 2005, one of his
key pledges was to tackle the unemployment problem. Among his
policies, Mr Ahmadi-Nejad has encouraged short-term job creation and
government-subsidised bank loans for regional infrastructure projects.

But reformists and even his fellow conservatives have criticised the
president's efforts to remedy the problem - and his management of the
economy in general, accusing the government of lacking "financial
discipline".

The economy, and the high rates of unemployment and inflation in
particular, will be at the forefront of voters' minds in the March
parliamentary elections.

Official statistics suggest that the unemployment rate is about 10 per
cent, broadly the same as when the president took office. Local
analysts,however, say the government has embarked on "data management"
and suggest the real rate is much higher.

A poll by Iran Economics, a leading business monthly, found the median
forecast among 12 economists, some of them working in government, was
14.5 per cent. But the rate is even worse when the number of
underemployed people is taken into account. Some economists suggest
that as much as a quarter of Iran's 21m-strong population eligible for
work is either unemployed or underemployed.

"Because of the big youth population there has been a tendency to hire
extra personnel, so most of the government offices and state-owned
companies are over-staffed," says Heydar Pourian, editor of Iran
Economics. "When you go to a government office you can see people with
PhDs sitting around doing nothing."

In Tehran it seems that almost everyone who does not have a job
becomes a taxi driver.

Mohammad bought a car so that his son, who has struggled to find a job
since finishing school, could work as a taxi driver. He was still
paying the instalments on that car when he realised, after retiring
from his job in a government ministry, that he needed to drive too.

"My daughter is now 23 but I can't afford the IR60m ($6,400, €4,300,
£3,200) it will cost for her to get married," he says, adding that his
daughter cannot contribute because there are no suitable jobs for her
either.

"There are not enough jobs out there for young -people," says
Mohammad. "A young man can get a job if he has a wealthy father
because his father can invest in a business for him. But otherwise
there is nothing but being a taxi driver or day labourer."

Every morning the squares of Tehran fill up with construction workers,
all hoping to be picked up for a day's work.

The situation is even worse outside the capital, economists say, where
there is less demand for skilled work. Much of the unskilled work in
the countryside is done for a pittance by Afghan immigrants.

Ali Farzin, an economist at the United Nations Development Programme's
office in Tehran, says the government's approach to tackling the
unemployment problem is insufficient. "You can't just do
infrastructure building without thinking about the software," Mr
Farzin says. "If you build roads into poor areas, this just leads to a
rise in property prices so that those who do not own property are left
behind. You have to create jobs as well as roads."

--
Yoshie
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