Iraq Keeps Releasing Old Economic Data As New To Claim Progress

  

The Iraqi government is not always the best source of information. One thing it often does is release old information as new to claim it is making progress in improving the country. There were recent examples of this regarding the economy.

 

On May 10 the Planning Ministry announced that unemployment had dropped from 16.5% to 13%. It claimed this was due to an increase in domestic production that created new jobs. Likewise it said that poverty was now down to 17.5% with the worse provinces being in the south like Muthanna with 43.6% being poor and the best being in Kurdistan with Irbil at 5.9% and Sulaymaniya at 7.9%.

 

The problem was this data was months old. In September 2025 the Planning Ministry first claimed poverty had gone from 23% to 17.5%. Likewise unemployment was said to be at 13% back in February 2025.  

 

Why did Baghdad do this? Because it wanted to show that it was addressing the needs of the public. Iraq has a huge and growing population of young people who struggle to find employment because the country doesn’t have a well developed private sector relying upon oil instead. The government deals with unemployment and poverty by creating thousands of new public sector jobs each year. The vast majority of these are unnecessary and only created to pacify the populace and used by the ruling parties in their patronage networks. Rather than admit that the state talks about how its development programs are working and things are getting better.

 

SOURCES

 

Bas News, “Erbil Records Lowest Poverty Rate: Iraqi Census,” 2/26/25

 

Al Mada, “The government talks about improving citizen’s living standards, but the public is skeptical,” 9/8/25

 

Rudaw, “Iraq unemployment falls to 13%, poverty rate declines to 17.5%: Ministry,” 4/30/26

 

Salem, Amr, “Unemployment rate significantly declines in Iraq,” Iraqi News, 5/29/25

 

Al-Samarraie, Jawad, “Iraq defines poverty threshold as ministry reports sharp decline in poverty rates,” Iraqi News, 12/24/25

- “Iraq unemployment falls to 13% amid industrial growth and reform,” Iraqi News, 5/10/26