Iran Reports 50% Inflation, 2 Million Job Losses After US Strait of Hormuz Blockade

Iran's official annual inflation has surged to 50% according to central bank figures released shortly after the ceasefire, while the year-on-year rate reached as high as 67% through mid-April. 8 million to the dollar, and roughly two million workers in Iran have lost their jobs. The US naval blockade of the Strait of Hormuz continues to throttle Iran's oil exports and critical imports.

Reconstruction costs from bombed infrastructure in Iran are estimated near $270 billion, close to the country's annual GDP of roughly $341 billion last year. 85 million barrels per day as recently as March, have been reduced to a near standstill. Shipping analysts at Kpler found no confirmed evidence of cargoes successfully breaching the US blockade to reach buyers in China or elsewhere.

Iran initially tried to use the Strait of Hormuz as leverage by disrupting traffic, but the US responded with a naval blockade that has effectively severed the Islamic Republic’s economic lifeline. Before the war, the Strait of Hormuz carried the vast majority of Iran’s oil revenue and imports ranging from food and medicine to industrial components.

Tehran has activated emergency bypass routes including rail and road connections through Turkey, Armenia, and Azerbaijan, Caspian Sea ports supplied by Russia, Kazakhstan, and Turkmenistan, and new transit corridors via Pakistan.

09) in a single week in Tehran. A popular Peugeot 207 has climbed from 18 billion rials to 25 billion rials since the conflict began. Officials in Iran are preparing to authorize a 40 percent increase in government-mandated cement prices.

60 a pound, in a country where the minimum wage is around $130 a month. The annual inflation rate in Iran reached 67% in the month through mid-April from the same period a year earlier, according to Iran’s central bank. Business consultant Siamak Ghassemi publicly advised Iranians that anything short of a near-doubling of wages would fail to offset the cost-of-living explosion.

One small petrochemical-dependent factory outside the capital in Iran has already dismissed nearly a third of its workforce. A clothing business owner in Iran reported recent costs running 150 percent above sales. 6% before the US-Israeli war with Iran.

Around one million direct job losses occurred in Iran due to the war, with another million indirect job losses, equivalent to roughly 8 percent of the pre-war employed population of 25 million, according to the Wall Street Journal informed by Iranian officials and international analysts.

War-related unemployment benefit applications in Iran have already reached 191,000. Steel output in Iran has dropped by up to 30 percent, as damaged petrochemical, gas, and steel complexes grapple with raw-material shortages and physical destruction.

Tehran has issued monthly food coupons worth around $7 per person. Virginia Tech economist Djavad Salehi-Isfahani told the Journal that Iranian leaders recognize ending the war is merely the prelude to an even harder challenge: managing a disillusioned and impoverished population without the rapid return of oil income.

One medium-sized steel entrepreneur told the Financial Times that his firm has so far avoided layoffs by shifting entirely to overland routes.

Pre-war protests in Iran were already triggered by economic distress and crushed with lethal force earlier this year. @zerohedge reported these developments, drawing from central bank data, Wall Street Journal analysis, and on-the-ground accounts in Tehran.