Objective: Designing and implementing employment programs constitutes one of the most important responsibilities of the government in Iran. Various governmental organizations have undertaken numerous initiatives to promote employment; however, statistical evidence indicates that despite the implementation of multiple employment-generation strategies and programs, the employment situation of young people has not improved substantially, and youth unemployment rates remain significantly higher than the national average. This study seeks to explain the factors underlying the success or failure of employment policies and programs implemented during the past two decades.
Methods: This study employs a documentary analysis approach. The analyzed documents include employment action plans, policy reports, and implementation reports related to employment-generation initiatives. Most of these documents were produced by the Islamic Consultative Assembly Research Center, the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labour and Social Welfare, and the Ministry of Sports and Youth. The documents were systematically examined to identify trends in employment policy development and to provide a theoretical interpretation of these changes. Data were coded and analyzed using thematic analysis.
Results: Existing studies in this field can generally be classified into two categories. The first group explains the effectiveness of employment programs primarily through economic growth and investment, arguing that employment initiatives are unlikely to achieve their objectives without sustained economic expansion and increased investment. The second group attributes the limited effectiveness of employment policies to the outdated nature of program titles and intervention frameworks. Through a longitudinal analysis of employment policy documents, this study demonstrates that the titles and frameworks of employment programs have largely been updated over the past two decades. Nevertheless, the findings reveal that the principal challenges affecting the design and implementation of employment programs are a lack of transparency, insufficient monitoring and evaluation mechanisms, and weak institutional coordination.
Conclusions: The study concludes that employment policies and programs suffer from structural weaknesses, including inadequate transparency, ineffective oversight, and poor coordination among relevant institutions, all of which contribute to their limited effectiveness. Enhancing transparency, accountability, and inter-organizational coordination requires establishing a balanced and constructive relationship among the state, the market, and civil society. Such an institutional arrangement can significantly improve the quality and effectiveness of employment policies, particularly those targeting youth employment.