An Examination of Job-Creation Capacity in Iranian Agriculture

   The main purpose of this study is to appraisal of Iranian agriculture job-creation and its sub-sectors potentials during 1962-2004. For a variety of reasons, including the decline in agriculture value added share in GDP, the growth of service sector employment, expansion of information technology, enhancing factors productivity, and rise in educated labor force, the structural changes in production and employment is inevitable. The share of Agriculture employment in total of employment has decreased since1956 (65 percent in 1956 to 22.7 in 2006). The hypothesis of this paper is that agriculture potential to job-creation is lesser than manufacturing and service sectors. The demand elasticity of labor force with respect to technology changing, value added, area harvested and capital accumulation estimated using VAR approach reveals significant but low parameters. Based these findings, it is recommended to policymakers to take a new policy to expand complementary investment to create jobs in agriculture sector. The government complementary investment in agriculture sector and youth empowerment, women and men by technical training especially in rural area, can affect on enhancing absorption labor force to keep sustainable employment rate in this sector.