Majority of the youth unemployed in Iranian Kurdistan

ERBIL, Kurdistan Region (K24) — the Iranian provinces of Kermanshah and Ilam have some of the highest unemployment rates despite the oil and gas industries that operate there.

Ilam Member of Parliament (MP), Omran Alimuhammadi, announced on Wednesday that unemployment in his constituency is now at forty percent. Though over 566 industrial operations were established in Ilam, 174 of them were closed down because of the national economic crisis. Hence, a large group of people lost their jobs.

Kermanshah and Ilam are both oil-rich provinces and though the Islamic Republic of Iran announced that some of the populations' incomes raised and that these regions are to see increased investment it has failed to fulfill its own promise. 

Kermanshah Province, which also hosts a large Kurdish minority population, has the third highest unemployment rate in Iran, at a little over fifteen percent.

Overall, more than fifty percent of the unemployed Iranians are living in provinces in the Western frontiers of Iran.

Additionally, fifty percent of the youth in Kermanshah Province are jobless, according to the Iranian official statistics.

According to the official Iranian statistics announced in summer 2015, Ilam Province suffers twelve percent unemployment. But on Tuesday, Iranian newspapers announced that over fifty-seven percent of the youth in Ilam between the ages 15 to 29 are unemployed.

Ilam Province which hosts a sizable Kurdish population, has the highest percentage, at forty percent, and Charmahal Bakhtiari Province has the second highest record, standing at sixteen percent.