Baku, Azerbaijan, April 9
By Khalid Kazimov - Trend:
Iranian deputy labor minister, Mohammad Amin Sazegarnejad, has said that the lack of professional skills is the main reason for unemployment in the country.
"The labor market requires skilled workforce. Therefore lack of professional skills is the most important reason behind unemployment," Mehr news agency quoted Sazegarnejad as saying.
He also called for training young workers to help youth find proper vacancies.
He further called for interaction with international bodies aimed at tackling unemployment in the country in the post sanctions era.
Iran's average unemployment rate over the last Iranian calendar year (ended March 20), stood at 11 percent indicating a 0.4 percent growth year-on-year.
Recent data released by the Iranian Statistical Center April. 6, suggests that the unemployment rate for men over the last Iranian calendar year was 9.3 percent and the figure for women was 19.4 percent.
The Iranian Statistics Center said that the report has considered those Iranians aged over 10 years who had a role in the production or service sectors as employed and those who had capability to be involved in production and service sectors but were not employed.
The statistics has revealed that the country's economically active population (employed, unemployed) is over 24.701 million people, while over 2.7 million out of the total number are unemployed.
The country's urban and rural unemployment rate in the mentioned period stood at 12.2 percent and 8.1 percent.
According to the center, 32.5 percent of the country's workers were employed in the agriculture sector, while 49.4 were employed in the industry and services sectors.
Iran's East Azerbaijan Province registered the lowest unemployment rate in the country (7.3 percent) while Kohgiluyeh and Boyer-Ahmad Province with 17.7 percent had the most unemployed population in the country.