The estimated cost of a basic household basket has more than doubled in months, while food prices have risen far faster than wages.
The U.S.-imposed maritime siege, the intensification of sanctions as a form of economic warfare, and the broader destruction wrought by the 40-day war have sharply deepened the Islamic Republic’s pre-existing economic crisis.
For wage earners in Iran, the arithmetic of everyday life is becoming increasingly brutal. The cost of maintaining a working-class household has more than doubled within months, while wages have failed to keep pace with the surge in prices.
According to calculations by the Wage Committee of the Supreme Labour Council, the basic cost-of-living basket stood at around 42.9 million tomans in January 2026. More recent monthly estimates now put that figure at close to 90 million tomans.
In other words, the estimated cost of meeting basic household needs has more than doubled, while wages have not been adjusted at anything approaching the same pace.
The Supreme Labour Council, meanwhile, is still calculating a revised subsistence basket and considering whether wages for 2026–27 should be reviewed.
At its September 1 meeting, the council agreed that its Wage Committee should calculate a new cost-of-living figure and submit it for consideration. Yet at the time this was reported, committee members had not even received invitations to begin the process.
The delay is unfolding against an extraordinary surge in food prices.
According to the latest figures from the Statistical Centre of Iran, year-on-year inflation for food and beverages reached around 128 percent in August. That means households were paying, on average, more than twice as much as a year earlier for a comparable basket of food.
Year-on-year inflation across all goods and services reached 89 percent, while average annual inflation stood at 69.9 percent.
Food prices have risen even faster. The 12-month average inflation rate for food and beverages exceeded 100 percent, reaching more than 103 percent.
For low-income households, this distinction matters enormously. Food consumes a much larger share of their income than it does for wealthier families. When food inflation accelerates faster than the broader cost of living, the pressure falls disproportionately on those already closest to the edge.
The Price of Eating
Some basic goods have risen far more sharply than the overall food index.
Cooking oil prices increased by more than 340 percent over the past year. Egg prices rose by roughly 260 to 290 percent. Chicken became between 142 and 176 percent more expensive, lamb prices increased by more than 113 percent, and imported rice rose by around 201 percent.
These are not luxury goods that low-income households can simply stop buying.
For poorer families, the room to cut food consumption is already limited. As prices rise, households are forced to eat less, remove certain foods from their diets altogether, or replace them with cheaper and lower-quality alternatives.
The result is not merely declining purchasing power in the abstract. It is a shrinking table.
Inflation Is Not Equal
The inflationary shock is also deeply unequal.
In August, average annual inflation for households in the second income decile reached 78.3 percent. For the wealthiest, tenth decile, it was 67.6 percent—a gap of 10.7 percentage points.
The reason is straightforward: poorer households spend a greater proportion of their income on food and other necessities, precisely the goods whose prices are rising fastest.
In August, year-on-year food inflation was almost twice the rate for non-food goods and services. The current wave of inflation is therefore concentrated most heavily in the costs that households cannot easily avoid.
For the poorest, inflation is not simply about paying more. It means progressively losing the ability to maintain the same standard of life.
Wages Frozen as Prices Race Ahead
Alireza Mahjoub, secretary-general of the state-sanctioned Workers’ House, called this week for wages to be revised, arguing that the collapse in the value of the national currency amounts to the imposition of poverty on people living on fixed incomes.
Pointing to food inflation above 100 percent, Mahjoub said food now takes up twice as much of the subsistence basket and argued that, under such conditions, wages cannot reasonably be reviewed only once a year.
Asad Salehi, a member of the Supreme Labour Council, made a similar point on Tuesday, September 1. He said living costs had risen dramatically while workers’ purchasing power had fallen.
Salehi also criticised the government’s one-million-toman cost-of-living support package as inadequate, suggesting that it should at least be doubled.
But even officials within recognised labour organisations acknowledge that any wage adjustment remains dependent on the Wage Committee meeting and the Supreme Labour Council eventually reaching a decision.
Prices, however, are not waiting for the council.
A subsistence basket estimated at 42.9 million tomans in January now costs around 90 million. Every month that wages remain unchanged widens the gap between what salaried workers earn and what it actually costs to live.
The workers’ food allowance tells much the same story. Under the most recent Supreme Labour Council decision, the monthly allowance remains frozen at 2.2 million tomans. It was supposed to be reconsidered in September in light of the soaring cost of basic goods.
For millions of wage earners, the central problem is therefore no longer simply inflation. It is the growing disconnection between wages and the material cost of reproducing everyday life.
When food prices rise by more than 100 percent while wages remain effectively fixed, “purchasing power” becomes an increasingly abstract phrase. What disappears in practice is food, security and the ability to plan even a few weeks ahead.
