Employment seminar series

Delving into the major labour market indicators of Iran

In this seminar, Dr. Ramin Behzad presents the findings of his research which examines the main labour market indicators of Iran, particularly labour force participation, unemployment rate and underemployment for men, women and youth in urban and rural areas.

News | 20 February 2019
Devising effective employment policies requires in depth knowledge on intrinsic characteristics of labour supply and demand in an economy. In this seminar, Dr. Ramin Behzad presents the findings of his research which examines the main Labour Market Indicators of Iran, particularly labour force participation, unemployment rate and underemployment for men, women and youth in urban and rural areas. The research also investigates the behavioral patterns of these indicators. It then focuses on exploring the nexus between the unemployment and labour force participation rates with an aim to shed more light on the particularities and specificity of the labour market. In doing so, a number of statistical tools are employed to examine the dependence structure of the afore-said variables. To gain further insight into the dependence structure, a Copula-based approach is also presented and utilized.

By conducting this analysis, the research subsequently assesses the unemployment invariance hypothesis versus the discouraged-worker and the added-worker hypotheses.

Discussants: Sukti Dasgupta (Chief, EMPLAB), Steve Kapsos (STATISTICS)
Chair: Sangheon Lee (Director, EMPLOYMENT)

Biography: Dr. Ramin Behzad
Ramin Behzad, Expert on Statistics and Actuarial Science. Dr. Behzad holds a PhD in Statistics from Allameh Tabatabae’i University, Tehran, Iran. He has been working for the Iranian Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare (MCLSW) since 2002. He has served as a labour statistician and then as the deputy of the Labour Market Information and Statistics Center of the MCLSW. Currently, he is serving as the representative of Iran (labour counselor) at the ILO in Geneva. Before taking up this position, he was professor of a number of statistical courses at Allameh Tabatabae’i University. He has conducted an array of researches, inter alia, into some labour topics.