Several million Iranians have lost their work and are being pushed into poverty amid the US-Israel war with Iran.
Few sectors have been spared. Among the legions of newly unemployed are refinery and textile workers, truck drivers, flight attendants, and journalists.
Iran’s economy was in a dire state before the conflict. National income per person had fallen from about $8,000 in 2012 to $5,000 in 2024, ravaged by inflation, corruption, and sanctions.
The outlook is even worse. Up to 4.1 million more people could fall into poverty due to the conflict, according to the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP).
The physical damage caused by thousands of airstrikes has caused widespread displacement, according to the UNDP. More than 23,000 factories and firms have been hit, media outlet EcoIran has reported.
That’s cost one million jobs directly, says Iran’s Deputy Work and Social Security Minister, Gholamhossein Mohammadi. And the spillover has pushed another million people out of work, the Iranian publication Etemad Online has estimated.
Disruption to shipping, and therefore imports, has also disrupted Iran’s already fragile economy, “placing 50% of Iranian jobs at risk and pushing an additional 5% of the population into poverty,” according to Hadi Kahalzadeh at the Quincy Institute, a foreign policy think tank.
Official data show a sudden jump in the numbers applying for unemployment insurance – with 147,000 applicants in the past two months, about three times higher than last year.
Read more about how Iranians are affected by the war.
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