An Estimation of Disguised Unemployment in Iranian Manufacturing Industries

The purpose of this paper is to estimate disguised unemployment in Iran manufacturing industries. For this purpose, we have used a dynamic employment model. The labor requirement frontier was approximated by applying Frontier Analysis method and translog cost function. The model is applied to a panel of nine groups of Iranian manufacturing industries based on two-digit ISIC classification for the period 1995-2012. We define disguised unemployment as the difference between optimal employment and actual employment. To find optimal employment we have used employment frontier function and we have defined optimal employment as the minimum labor requirement for a specified level of output. Our findings show that on average, disguised unemployment was more than 47 percent of total employments in manufacturing industries. However, this proportion was higher in group of “miscellaneous industries” (75 percent), followed by “nonmetallic minerals” (74/8 percent), but it was much lower in “textiles, apparel and leather industries” (2 percent) and “woods and furniture industries” (6 percent). In industries as important as “machinery” and “transport equipment”, disguised unemployment was around 58 percent. These findings seem reasonable, stemming probably from under-utilization of capacity in manufacturing industries.