Causes of Internal Migration

EghtesadOnline: Looking for a job and finding better employment were the main reasons behind internal migration in Iran in the last Iranian year (ended March 20, 2018) after “following family’s decision”.

News ID: ۷۸۴۰۴۷

22 September 2018

The finding has been made after the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare conducted a recent study.

The population of Iran’s internal migrants reached 684,000 last year, of whom around 567,000 resided in urban areas and 117,000 in rural areas.

Over 561,000 of the total population of migrants last year were of ages 10 or above, accounting for over 82.1% of the total figure, according to Financial Tribune.

Out of 295,000 or 52.6% of the economically active population of migrants, more than 223,000 (75.5%) were employed and 72,000 (24.5%) were unemployed.

“Following family’s decision”, “looking for a job”, and “finding better employment” were the top reasons behind the internal migration of the employed population in Iran last year.

This is while “education”, “graduation” and “doing the mandatory military service” were the least important reasons.

“End of mandatory military service”, “following family’s decision” and “looking for job” were the top reasons behind the migration of the unemployed population last year while “job transition”, “education” and “doing the mandatory military service” were the least important reasons behind the migration of this population.

According to the latest report by the Statistical Center of Iran, Iran’s unemployment rate in the first quarter of the current Iranian year (March 21-June 21) stood at 12.1%, registering a 0.5% drop compared with the same period of last year.

A total of 3.32 million Iranian workforce were unemployed in spring.

The unemployment rate was 13.6% for urban areas (2.75 million people) and 7.9% for rural areas (568,631 people).

The SCI has put Q1 labor force participation rate—the proportion of the population of people 10 years and above that are economically active either employed or looking for work—at 41.1% or 27.38 million people, registering a 0.5% rise year-on-year.

Unemployment rate among women stood at 19.2% while it hovered around 10.3% among men, as over 2.25 million men and 1.07 million women of ages 10 and above were jobless in the first quarter.

Men’s and women’s economic participation rates were 65.3% and 16.8% respectively in Q1.

According to SCI, 21.82 million men and 5.56 million women of ages 10 and above were economically active in the first three months of the current year, meaning that they were either employed or looking for a job.

SCI provides two figures for the youth unemployment rate: the proportion of the population between the ages of 15 and 24 and those between 15 and 29 years.

The unemployment rate among those between 15 and 24 years stood at 28.3% in Q1, posting a 0.5% decrease while the unemployment rate of those between 15 and 29 stood at 25.5%, posting a 0.9% drop compared with the same period of last year.

The share of higher education unemployment from the total rate of unemployment was 36.4% in Q1, which indicate a decrease of 1% compared with the first quarter of last year. The unemployment rates for male and female graduates stood at 23.8% and 63.1% respectively while higher education unemployment rates were 17.4% in urban areas and 22.2% in rural areas during the period under review.

Semnan Province filed the lowest unemployment rate of 7.1% among all Iranian provinces in Q1 while Chaharmahal-Bakhtiari Province had the highest unemployment rate of 22.8%, the latest report by the Statistical Center of Iran said.

Tehran Province, wherein lies the capital city, registered a 12.3% unemployment rate.

Eleven provinces, namely Semnan (7.1%), Ardabil (7.7%), Zanjan (8.2%), Hamedan (8.2%), South Khorasan (8.5%), North Khorasan (8.8%), Markazi (8.8%), Golestan (8.8%), Mazandaran 8.8%, East Azarbaijan (9.9%) and Fars (9.9%), registered single-digit unemployment rates in spring.

Gilan Province had the highest labor force participation rate (46.8%) and Markazi Province had the lowest labor force participation rate (34.5%), whereas Tehran registered a 40.1% participation rate in Q1.

Ardabil registered the highest employment rate of 42.1% while Lorestan filed the lowest employment rate of 30.8% in Q1 among all Iranian provinces.