In the current situation, the Iranian people are struggling daily to make ends meet. Many families are trying desperately to stabilize their current economic conditions, which have become a major priority to them rather than their health conditions, but the statistics are painting a picture that most of them are sadly failing to do so.
It is evident that the people’s livelihood baskets have become the main target of the regime’s cut-offs. Inflation has changed people’s lifestyles for the worse, with many people being forced to reduce their expenses for education and entertainment.
Where this has not solved their problems, people have then had to resort to reducing their expenses for food, leaving thousands suffering from malnutrition. A large majority of people within society are also struggling with their living conditions and can hardly meet the basic needs of life.
With the skyrocketing prices of rice, people are being forced to consume imported brands of lower quality. In contrast, the per capita consumption of meat for each person has dropped significantly, currently reaching four kilograms per year.
This is far behind most countries in the world, even the developing ones. For example, the per capita meat consumption in Kuwait is 67 kg.
Six years ago, the annual income of a family was around $10,000. Today, this has shrunk to about $5,000 while the dollar is being traded on the free market for around 480,000 rials.
In comparison, the monthly salary of an American worker in April 2022 was around $4,400. This means that an American worker is currently earning 11.5 times the annual income of an Iranian family.
The Iranian regime’s Statistics Center figures are showing that people spent about 10% of their non-food expenses on entertainment and clothing in 2015, but this amount decreased to 5% by 2020. In the same period, housing expenses for Iranian households increased from 44% to 48% in 2020.
In recent years, more and more Iranian workers and retirees have been falling below the poverty line, or as the regime’s media called it the ‘hunger line’. This equates to more than 65% percent of the country’s population.
Some of the regime’s MPs have suggested a 20% increase in incomes for the workers and retirees’, but this will not solve any problems or satisfy them because it is not proportional to the rise in the inflation rate. In order to maintain purchasing power, wages must increase according to the inflation rate.
The Ministry of Labor has set the poverty line figure at 15 million rials in big cities across Iran. According to unofficial calculations, the subsistence basket rate has now reached 18 million rials, while the minimum wage this year is just 6 million rials.
Right now, there is no proportionality between wages, the poverty line, and the rate of the subsistence basket. It is ridiculous that in such a situation, the regime’s MPs are only considering a mere 20% increase in workers’ salaries.
The regime’s officials, along with its supreme leader Ali Khamenei, have spoken consistently about a production boom, but such incomes will only increase the frustration and desperation of the workers and push them to jobs such as broker and service workers.
Workers have to work two or three shifts a day, in most cases, in order to meet the basic needs of their families, such as food, clothing, education, housing, and health, which will only have bad social effects in the long run.
