Inside Iran’s Gen Z
In Iran, 17.5 million young people are coming of age through war, massacre, and the country’s longest internet blackout. This edition of DataState, our fortnightly dispatch, looks at what the numbers say about their future, and why Iran’s oil tanks are running out of room.
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Iran’s Gen Z Faces 32 Percent Unemployment, Record Internet Blackout
Luna is seventeen. For three years she ran a small business on Instagram and YouTube, one of countless informal ventures young Iranians have built outside a formal economy that has little room for them. For seventy days, she has been unable to open either platform.
She belongs to a generation of roughly 17.5 million Iranians, about one in five citizens, entering adulthood with fewer opportunities than any generation before them, and with little fear of the government that has shaped their lives. Youth unemployment now stands at 32 percent, three times the national average, while inflation hit 50.6 percent in April and housing alone consumes 70 percent of wage earners’ income.
Drawing on interviews with teenagers across several Iranian cities, this report finds a generation whose plans have been narrowed or abandoned, and whose anger has outlasted hope.
Iran’s Onshore Oil Storage Tops 70 Percent as Blockade Halts Exports
Iran has started reducing oil output as onshore storage tanks approach capacity, following a month-long US naval blockade that has nearly halted exports. More than 70 percent of the country’s onshore tanks are now filled, and at Kharg Island, home to 42 percent of national storage capacity, that figure exceeds 82 percent.
Our analysis of Kpler shipping data, Bloomberg reporting, and OPEC production statistics finds Iran facing its first forced production cut of the sanctions era. Crude output has already fallen 350,000 barrels per day below pre-war levels, and if the blockade holds, production will have to drop below 1.7 million barrels per day.
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