Survey: Householders Constitute 62% of Unemployment Benefit Applicants

EghtesadOnline: A survey conducted by the Social Security Organization’s Research Institute of over 700,000 applicants of unemployment insurance benefits shows 61.9% of them were the head of households and 27.1% lived in families with another wage earner.

News ID: ۷۵۱۲۴۹

12 October 2020

According to Rouzbeh Kerdouni, the head of the institute, 40.4% of the respondents were women and 59.6% men.

Noting that 21.2% of those surveyed were single and 72.4% married, he added that of those who had applied for unemployment benefits, 22.6% had permanent and 77.4% held temporary contracts with their employer, 86.4% of them had never received benefits and 76.7% of respondents said they had applied for unemployment insurance.

“The poll also found that 77.1% of the respondents were employed in the services sector, 1.4% in agriculture and 21.5% in the industrial sector. Seventy-six percent of them were full-time employees and 24% were paid on hourly basis; 58.2% stated that their employers did not provide them with a copy of their contracts,” Kerdouni was quoted as saying by Fars News Agency.

The survey also indicated that 58.4% of the respondents were tenants and 41.6% owned a home.

Of all the respondents, 25.5% were paying loan installments worth 5-10 million rials ($16-33) a month; 25% had to pay loan installments worth 10-20 million rials ($33-66); 16% were paying loan installments worth under 5 million rials ($16); 15.6% had no debts; 10% had to pay loan installments worth 20-30 million rials ($66-100); 4% had to repay loans worth 30-40 million rials ($100-133) and 3.7% paid monthly installments worth over 40 million rials ($133).

Kerdouni added that 87.9% of the respondents were receiving government cash subsidies under the Targeted Subsidies Law of 2010 and 54.6% collected cash subsidies under the so-called Livelihood Assistance Program.

The Targeted Subsidies Law of 2010 authorized the reduction of food and energy subsidies, and instead allowed the payment of 455,000 rials ($1.5) to each and every Iranian on a monthly basis.

The plan has been retained and more than 95% of Iranians currently receive the monthly cash subsidy.

Cash transfer to people as compensation for higher gasoline prices were granted to nearly 60 million people. They receive cash support worth a total of 24,200 billion rials ($80 million) through the so-called Livelihood Assistance Program launched on Nov. 19, 2019.