Reports published in recent days, despite media restrictions, censorship, self-censorship, and the removal of a large part of the reality on the ground, show a clear picture of a deep crisis in Iran’s labor market: falling purchasing power, suspension and dismissal of workers, delayed wages, interrupted or delayed insurance payments, unstable contracts, pressure on retirees, and a growing need for unemployment insurance.

This picture is not complete. A large part of layoffs, factory shutdowns, protests, workplace accidents, and insurance cuts never makes it into official media. Still, what has been published through licensed media is enough to show that Iran’s labor crisis has moved beyond a simple “cost of living problem.” It has become a crisis in the reproduction of working-class life itself.

At the center of this situation is the gap between wages and the cost of living. A published estimate of the basic household basket shows that the figure calculated during wage negotiations, around 45 million tomans, has risen to 71.3 million tomans in less than two months. The same report says that the minimum wage, even with all benefits included, does not reach 100 dollars. It is estimated at around 88 dollars.

These figures, even if they are based on official and debatable data, show that wages no longer fulfill even their most basic function: covering food, housing, and medical costs. The report also refers to a point-to-point inflation rate of 73.5 percent in Farvardin and an annual inflation rate of 53.7 percent. For lower-income groups, the real pressure is even heavier.

This wage crisis is happening while the labor market, after war and industrial destruction, has entered a new phase of insecurity. The news that 205,000 people have registered for unemployment insurance is not just an administrative figure. It is a sign of expanding formal unemployment, or at least unemployment that workers have been forced to pursue through state systems and official institutions.

The labor minister has said this support will be paid to all eligible applicants. But workers’ experience shows that there is a long distance between registration, eligibility approval, actual payment, and the ability to survive. This number alone, especially under severe restrictions on reporting, should be read as a warning sign.

In Ilam, around 152 contract workers from the second phase of the gas refinery became unemployed in three stages between Mehr 1404 and Farvardin 1405 after their contracts ended. The workers say they are all local residents from Chavar County, with an average of four to five years of work experience. Since late Esfand, they have been trying to return to work.

Their gathering in front of the provincial Labor Department shows that, in Iran, “the end of a contract” is often just the administrative name for dismissal. A worker on a temporary contract, after several years in an industrial project, has no job security, no guarantee of transfer to another project, and no institution that truly defends them against the contractor and the main employer.

The same pattern can be seen in other sectors. At Kish Choob, more than 120 directly contracted workers have not received wages since Aban, and their insurance payments have also been delayed since the beginning of Dey. Workers at this factory produce industrial kitchen systems, building doors, and furniture. The report says many of them are migrant workers living far from their families on Kish Island.

In such a situation, five months of unpaid wages and at least two months of delayed insurance are not just an employer violation. They mean the simultaneous loss of income, medical coverage, and the ability to remain at work.

In Lorestan, around 350 railway technical infrastructure workers on the Azna to Tang-e Haft route protested around several specific demands: a change in employment status, full payment of overtime benefits, and payment of customary and seasonal claims. These workers are responsible for maintaining railway lines and protecting rail safety, yet they themselves remain trapped in chronic job insecurity.

The temporary end of the protest after the employer’s promise does not mean the issue has been resolved. In Iran, promises of payment and promises of follow-up are among the worn-out mechanisms used to manage labor protests. They can stop a protest temporarily, but without independent organization and collective follow-up, the issue can easily be postponed and forgotten again.

Alongside employed and dismissed workers, Social Security retirees are also living in a state of suspension. They have demanded that pension increases be announced and applied before the end of Ordibehesht, stressing that pensions must be raised according to Articles 96 and 111 of the Social Security Law.

The important point is that a retired worker in Iran is no longer simply “retired.” Many are still responsible for supporting family members, paying for medical treatment, rent, debts, and their children’s expenses. A delay in increasing pensions, especially when the value of money is falling every day, means the pension loses part of its real value before it is even paid.

Workplace accidents are not separate from this crisis. The death of a 70-year-old municipal street cleaner in Qom after a traffic accident, alongside a published note about the deaths of young workers in the Sufian glue factory incident, shows the two faces of Iran’s labor market at the same time: on one side, young workers dying in unsafe industrial units; on the other, elderly workers who are still forced to work in hard and dangerous jobs at the age of 70.

When a worker at retirement age is still cleaning streets, the issue is not only the accident itself. It is the failure of the pension system, wage poverty, and the compulsion to keep working to the point of exhaustion and death. The labor news list for 15 Ordibehesht places worker death, industrial accidents, wage protests, dismissals, unemployment insurance, and the pension crisis next to each other.

Meanwhile, food coupon schemes and support packages are more a sign of the depth of the crisis than a solution to it. The start of the tenth phase of the electronic food coupon scheme, alongside reports on the collapse of wage value and workers’ inability to buy basic items, shows that the state has effectively accepted that wages no longer cover even minimum food needs.

But when food coupons replace real wage increases, job security, effective insurance, price control, and the right to independent organization, they become a tool for managing poverty. The worker remains poor; poverty is simply managed through cards, online systems, and administrative phases.

The overall picture is clear: Iran’s war-damaged and inflation-hit economy has transferred its crisis directly onto the body of the labor force. A worker becomes unemployed. An employed worker does not receive wages. A worker’s insurance is delayed. A retiree waits for a new pension order. A project worker is removed through the end of a contract. An elderly municipal worker dies on the job. And the state speaks of support packages and administrative promises instead of guaranteeing life.

These data still show the minimum reality, not the whole reality. In a space shaped by media repression, the absence of independent unions, security pressure on labor activists, disruption of free information flow, and official control over narratives, we cannot conclude that the scale of the crisis is limited to what appears in these reports. It should be read the other way around: when even official and restricted media publish such cases, the real situation in factories, projects, small workshops, contracting companies, municipalities, mines, construction sites, and the informal sector is probably much broader and harsher.

The issue in Iran’s labor crisis today is that the state and capital have transferred the cost of war, inflation, recession, industrial destruction, corruption, and political instability onto the working class. Workers had no role in decisions about war, economic policy, exchange rates, privatization, contracting systems, or the public budget. But they are the first to pay the price through unemployment, unpaid wages, smaller food baskets, suspended insurance, impoverished retirement, and death at work.

These reports, despite all their limits, carry a clear message: Iran’s labor crisis is no longer a set of scattered news items. It is a general condition. It is the condition of a labor force that produces, maintains, repairs, carries, builds, cleans, and at the end of the month is denied even the basic right to live.