Financial Tribune - About 600,000 of people have filed for unemployment because of the coronavirus pandemic over the past 20 days, says Hojjat Mirzaie, an official with the Ministry of Cooperatives, Labor and Social Welfare.

�These people were mostly employed in the services sector,� he added.

Ali Rabiei, the government spokesman, said the economy could lose up to four million jobs.

�More than 12 million workers are employed in the services sector. The early impacts of unemployment can be seen in 10 business groups that were closed as soon as the virus was confirmed. Close to 3.3 million of the employed population in the official economy are directly affected by the crisis,� Rabiei was quoted as saying by the Persian-language daily Etemad.