Continuing the declining trend of the unemployment rate in recent months can lead to a single-digit figure for Iran by the end of the current Iranian calendar year, Cooperatives, Labor, and Social Welfare Minister Abdolreza Sheikholeslami stated.

The Iranian calendar year ends on March 20, 2012. 

Iran’s unemployment rate declined to 11.1 percent in the end of summer from 13.6 percent in the end of spring this year, the Mehr news agency reported.

The lowest unemployment rate during the past six years was registered in spring 2008, which was 9.6 percent.

Some 1 million new jobs have been created in the first half of the current year.

During the previous year, the nation’s working population was 25 million, according to the Statistics Center of Iran.

Earlier this year, the Iranian minister said that the country plans to cut its unemployment rate to seven percent by the end of 2012 in line with the fifth socio-economic development plan.

The ministry has proposed a plan for sending up to 100,000 laborers to abroad by the end of the fifth five-year development plan (2015) as a bid to ease unemployment problem.

Eighteen countries have been identified as the targets for the Iranian workforce.