Azerbaijan, Baku, Oct.22 /Trend G.Mehdi/
Iran's unemployment rate dropped by about one per cent during the summer from 12.9 per cent in the spring, the Mehr News Agency quoted the Statistical Centre of Iran director Adel Azar as saying.
"Due to the expansion of agricultural and building activities in summer, the unemployment rate usually falls in the summer each year," he explained.
Mehr reported on October 13 that despite the Iranian administration's claims of creating millions of jobs in recent years, the jobless rates in 14 provinces have increased during the past year.
Single digit unemployment rates in seven provinces have been turned to double digit rates and in eight other provinces jobless rates are above 14 per cent.
The hardest situation is seen in Markazi, Mazandaran, Gilan, Lorestan, and Qom provinces.
Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami said that the unemployment rate is planned to be cut to seven per cent by the end of the fifth socio-economic development plan (March 2016).
According to Sheikholeslami, Iran's High Council of Employment has approved allocating 45 trillion rials (some $37 billion) to job creation plans in the current calendar year.
First Vice President Mohammadreza Rahimi has said that the administration of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has created jobs as much as twice that of the figure it had promised during the past two years.
Rahimi added that if non-Iranian workers leave the country, the jobless rate will not exceed one or two per cent.