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Written question asked by Andrew George (Liberal Democrat) on Tuesday, 17 January 2006, in the House of Commons. It was due for an answer on Thursday, 19 January 2006. It was answered by Hilary Benn (Labour) on Wednesday, 25 January 2006 on behalf of the Department for International Development.

Iraq

Question
To ask the Secretary of State for International Development what the rate of unemployment has been in Iraq for each of the past four years.
Answer

No official figures on the Iraqi labour force exist, so only very broad estimates of unemployment are available, and we do not have information broken down by year exactly as requested. An International Labour Organisation (ILO) mission to Iraq in April/May 2000 estimated the unemployment rate as 50 to 60 per cent. The United Nations and World Bank social and economic needs assessments (carried out after the conflict in 2003) estimated that the unemployment rate before the 2003 war had been around 30 per cent.Current estimates for unemployment vary considerably. The ““Iraq Living Conditions Survey 2004””, conducted by the Iraqi Central Office for Statistics and Information Technology in April/May 2004, estimates an unemployment rate of 10.5 per cent. This survey can be found at http://www.iq.undp.org/ILCS/overview.htm The Brookings Institution (Iraq Index, January 2006) estimates the current unemployment rate to be between 28 and 40 per cent., noting varying estimates from the Iraqi Ministry for Planning (30 per cent.) and the Iraqi Ministry for Social Affairs (48 per cent.). In the same report the Brookings Institution gives the following estimates of unemployment rates in previous months:

Percentage
June 2003 50 to 60
January 2004 30 to 45
January 2005 27 to 40
December 2005 25 to 40

Secondary information

Type
Written question
Reference
44443; 441 c2144W
Session
2005-06
Subjects
Iraq Unemployment
Contains statistics
Yes
Link
View this Written question on www.publications.parliament.uk