Amid war and sanctions, unemployment worsens in Iran

0:00Unemployment is skyrocketing in Iran as the war with the United States straggs on. People are losing jobs and livelihoods as inflation sores, with many saying they're not just having to borrow to make ends meet but are putting life on hold. From Istanbul, NPR spoke with Iranians and international correspondents Hideo Al-Shalchi shares their stories. Rasul, a 42-year-old engineer in Tehran, had a good job at a tech company. He felt economically secure until the war hit. Then he started worrying. I'm always used to tell my wife if worse comes to worse, I'll just drive for snacks, he says. That's a ride-sharing app. The Iranian equivalent to Uber that uses a local cellular network totally under the regime's control. The day Rasul feared, eventually came. Like all Iranians NPR spoke to for this report, Rasul asked not to use his full name for fear of retribution from the government. In January, Iranian authorities cut the internet network people used to communicate with the outside world during a brutal crackdown on protests. The disruption

1:05damaged his company's delivery service. The company's situation got really bad, Rasul says. They were losing customers one by one. He eventually lost his job in mid-February. I was going through a period of severe depression, Rasul says. It's been more than six months since the US and Israel went to war in Iran, and Iranians have had to bear the brunt of the consequences. They're arising gas prices, rising food prices, rising rent prices, and a rise in unemployment. Rasul struggled to pay living expenses and could barely afford rent and it took a toll mentally. To survive, he reluctantly tried driving for snap at night. I remember being extremely anxious, accepting a ride, waiting, having the passenger to get in, and so on. Rasul says. But with gas prices and car repairs, it quickly got too expensive,

2:05and the US Israeli strikes made it too dangerous to keep driving for snap. He leaned on his family to make ends meet and says at this point, even having kids is out of the question. I thought that after marriage I could keep working and traveling, going places together, but since we got married, nothing, he says. Rasul officially joined the ranks of Iran's growing unemployed. The official unemployment rate in Iran is 9%, but analysts say the real number is likely much higher. The demand for work is so high that the Iranian Job-seeking website Job Vision said on April 25th, it saw a 50% bump in resume submissions. Ali Reza Mahjub is the head of Iran's workers' house, the country's main labor organization. In a TV interview on state media in May, he said unemployment numbers were way worse than he expected. We don't know how much it will afflict our already fragile working class, leaving us all helpless and powerless. Mahjub said,

3:10Kavan knows the helplessness all too well. He's a 42-year-old materials engineer from Tehran. He helped a Chinese company start a business specializing in raw materials for the oil sector, but then the war started. The environment became so unsafe, transit routes and shipping routes were shut down. The straight of Hormuz was closed. Sea transport became impossible. Kavan says, clients stopped placing orders and eventually his company had to shut down. He says losing his job was tough. The demand on everything, my home, my great. It was like those American movies where people dumped their belongings into a box and clear out their desk. Kavan says, he says his family relied on his wife's income and dipped into their personal savings. Terrifying inflation, unprecedented price hikes, we've genuinely never experienced days like these before, he says. Right now, Kavan just wants the war to end. We're all just falling apart, he says.

4:12Former snap driver Rasul was able to finally find a job in July as a sales manager, but even that is shaky. We're like passengers on a train, he says. We don't know if the bridge ahead is broken or intact. Hediel Al-Shalchi, NPR News, Istanbul.