Inefficiency of the 1956 General Census to Recognize Unemployment An Example of the Ratio of Economic Statistics to Historical Reality

Since 1956, the results of the periodic general census have been the main official sources of statistics for the unemployed population. Based on the results of the census, the Iranian society was in a full employment situation in 1956. This is while the development investments had led to non-productive or inefficient sectors of the country in the 1940s and the 1950s, on the one hand, and the rural population which was the majority at that time had overtaken the sources and the production facilities of the villages, on the other hand. Hence, a large part of the active population of the country was faced to apparent and hidden unemployment. So, the research question is why the 1956 Iranian general census was unable to show the rate of this unemployment? And the claim is that the categorization or classification which the census of unemployed people had been implemented on made the statistics altered or concealed. This type of classification of the workforce were based on wage labor, whereas in Iranian society at that time, peasantry (raʿīyatī) prevailed over the other forms of laboring. Accordingly, the quality of unemployment representation is initially discussed in the mentioned census, and then, the method through which the agricultural land were being utilized before the land reform will be examined to show how the unemployment figures remained hidden or were not counted in the 1956 general census.