Iranian youth at crossroads amid dire economic straits

By Syed Zafar Mehdi
TEHRAN, Iran (AA) – Ibrahim Zarie, 29, is not a happy man these days. He lost his well-paid job at a major construction firm in Tehran last year, just months before he was planning to get hitched.

The new job the civil engineer from southwestern Shiraz city landed at a smaller company on the outskirts of Tehran, after months of slogging, earns him considerably less.

With a significant drop in earnings and staggering rise in expenses, the chances of finding a suitable match have also become slim. He has already faced rejections in five proposals.

“Life can be a tough taskmaster,” Zarie told Anadolu Agency, sounding philosophical.

“Just a few years ago, everything seemed to be going my way, both professionally and personally, and now suddenly I find myself at the crossroads”.

The eldest of three siblings, and the only son, the young engineer has to shoulder the burden of his family too. But since he lost his previous job last year, he has not been able to support his family financially. With meager earnings, he cannot even manage his own expenses now.

Economic catastrophe
Iran's currency rial has lost over 600 percent value against the US dollar in last three years, fueling record high inflation and making everything from food to housing unbearably expensive.

The economic catastrophe was triggered by the reinstatement of crippling sanctions in 2018 by the former US administration of Donald Trump after it walked out of the 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

While all and sundry have been affected by it, the unmarried youth like Zarie have faced the heat.

Some have lost jobs, some have lost houses, some have squandered investments, some have gone bankrupt, and some have fled the country in search of better life, and better dreams.

However, the biggest challenge has been marriages, which involve heavy expenditure in Iran, with the dire economic situation only making it more onerous.

“Fatter the paycheck, better are the chances of tying the knot in Iran,” Zarie said, blaming the US sanctions, economic mismanagement and COVID-19 crisis for his personal and professional woes.

His monthly earnings have plummeted four times in last two years while the costs of living have jumped exponentially, making it difficult to rent a decent house and pay for marriage expenses.

He is now pinning hopes in the new Iranian administration led by top conservative Ebrahim Raeisi, who has promised to focus on problems faced by youth.

Raeisi, who won the June 18 presidential vote by a thumping majority, has urged the youth “not to exact revenge” from the next administration for the hardships they faced during the previous one.

He described the young generation as the country’s “most significant resource”, while vowing to focus on issues like unemployment, high marriage expenses, and rapidly swelling housing prices.

Scourge of joblessness
According to the government-run Statistical Center of Iran, unemployment rate for youth between 15-24 years stood at 22.1 percent in the first quarter of the current Iranian fiscal year (March 21-June 21), while unemployment rate for population between 18-35 years was reported at 15.6 percent.

The overall unemployment rate for the first quarter of this year, for people aged 15 and above, stood at 8.8 percent, accounting for a total of 2,291,604 Iranian youth. Some other estimates put the number much higher.

The economic recession fueled by the US “maximum pressure” campaign and the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a disquieting surge in unemployment in Iran in recent years, a majority of them youth.

Experts believe that generation of jobs and development of the labor market is virtually impossible without lifting sanctions or at least neutralizing their impact on the domestic economy.

“Development of the job market is inconceivable without proper investment and planning,” Mahmoud Ghaffari, a Tehran-based economist, told Anadolu Agency.

“Both the sanctions and the pandemic have shrunk our labor market, leaving millions of educated youth jobless or with earnings that are not compatible with their work and not enough to lead a good life”.

Notably, the unemployment rate of Iranian youth is twice the global average. More than two-thirds of the country's population is presently of the working age, but their potential is not being tapped.

What makes the situation direr and graver is the fact that paychecks have shrunk considerably while the expenses have multiplied.

“The average salary of a middle-rung job in Iran today is around $200 to $300, while some years ago it used to be over $1000,” Maryam Pirhayati, a Tehran-based retailer, told Anadolu Agency.

“At the same time, prices of essential commodities have seen four to five-fold increase, which means a bottle of milk that used to cost 30,000 toman now costs 150,000 toman.”

Marriage crisis
The dire economic situation has also discouraged Iranian youth from marrying and starting families early. The lack of jobs, meager earnings, high marriage costs, staggering housing prices, and fear of failed marriages act as major hurdles.

According to the Statistics Center of Iran, the average age of marriage among Iranian youth has increased significantly in recent years, as young men and women are reluctant to take the giant leap.

“In Iranian society, the suitable age for marriage of a boy is 27-28 while for a girl it is 22-23, the delay means being left behind in the race,” Mohammad Taala, a sociologist at Tehran University, told Anadolu Agency. “The difficult economic situation has changed it all.”

According to experts, around 10 million youth in Iran are presently “at the marriageable age”, but issues like marriage costs, jewelry, house, children are causing the delay in marriages.

For girls and their families, providing dowry has emerged as an expensive proposition, considering the skyrocketing prices of household items as the national currency rial continues to nosedive.

For boys, with soaring prices of gold and housing, marriages have become equally difficult, to the point that some have stopped thinking about it.

“If the situation continues to be like this, marriage will soon be affordable only for the affluent,” Sarah Fattah, a university student from Isfahan city, told Anadolu Agency. “Unless the custom of dowry and gold is done away with, which seems highly unlikely.”

In an indication of how grave this issue has become, on the occasion of Iran’s National Marriage Day recently, the hashtag “marriage crisis” was one of the top trending topics on social media.

Young social media users shared their concerns, problems, complaints and demanded that the new government facilitate youth marriages and ease the burden of exorbitant expenses.

They cited reasons such as unemployment, lack of stable jobs, high housing prices and lack of support from the government to drive their point home.