Evidence from Labor Flows in the Period of Jobless Growth and Growthless Employment

From 1384 to 1395, Iran's labor market experienced two puzzling behaviors in the total number of employees, which we call: “puzzles of jobless growth (1384-1390) and growthless employment (1391-1395)". These two puzzles cannot be explained by focusing only on the net changes in the total number of employees. Alternatively, we need to focus on the dynamic labor market indicators. For this purpose, we estimated the labor flow rates for these two periods. Our results indicate that the sharp increase in the total number of employees between 1391 and 1395 was correlated with a sharp reduction in the separation rate and, contrary to expectation, the hire rate did not increase. We also found that, in the second period, workers became more stable in their current activity status in comparison to the first period.