Iran loses about 630,000 industrial jobs in spring 1405 as industry's employment share falls to 31 percent

Iran's industrial labour market shed about 630,000 jobs in spring 1405. Over the same season, industry's share of total national employment fell to 31 percent, down from the 33 to 34 percent range of recent years, while the services sector absorbed workers at a faster pace.

Donya-e-Eqtesad reports that analysts read the shift not as a planned structural transformation but as a reflection of pressure on manufacturing and the reduced capacity of industrial firms to take on labour. Fatemeh Azizkhani, a labour market economist, said the development continues a trend of the past several quarters, noting that the Chamber of Commerce's purchasing managers index has reported unfavourable manufacturing conditions for consecutive months.

Rising production costs, workforce cuts, difficulty sourcing raw materials, restricted access to foreign currency and weaker purchasing demand all indicate that industry is caught in an attritional recession, she said. She added that Iran's economy already faced sanctions, energy imbalance and widespread uncertainty before the war, and that the war was an external shock that intensified the trend.