Iraq's middle class is languishing

It is not the job the 26-year-old envisioned when he earned his teaching degree, but it's the best he can do for now in a country teeming with educated, ambitious people -- but sorely lacking in suitable jobs that pay living wages.

Years of political turmoil, U.S.-imposed sanctions and war have devastated Iraq's workforce. Hundreds of thousands of skilled professionals have left the country. Businesses have closed. Insurgents and thugs have targeted professors, doctors and businesspeople, killing them, abducting them or driving them out of their jobs and out of Iraq.

Even as sectarian violence subsides, the options are limited for those who remain.

Shiite Muslims, who say they were held back from good jobs under Saddam Hussein's Sunni Muslim-led regime, complain that corruption and violence now limit their opportunities. Sunni Arabs say they are discriminated against as payback for Hussein's mistreatment of Shiites, who now dominate the government.

"I feel this job doesn't suit my dignity or personality, being a guard in a clinic, passing the night between four walls talking to nobody," said Mohammed, who lives in Hillah, a city about 60 miles south of Baghdad. "I think it is difficult to find the job I would like in Iraq, under the current circumstances. I wish I could leave Iraq, but it is not that easy."

Iraq's government estimates unemployment at 17.6% and underemployment at 38%, but those are considered conservative figures. The problem is seen as one of the major threats to the country's long-term recovery. To make matters more precarious, about 60% of the population is younger than 30 -- and many young people are ripe for recruitment into criminal life if the money is right.

"A lot of these people are pretty much stagnant, with low-income wages," said Col. Gabe Lifschitz of the U.S. military's Gulf Region Division, comprised of military and civilian personnel working on reconstruction projects in Iraq. Without middle-class people creating job opportunities for low-wage earners to move up the economic ladder, Lifschitz said, Iraq's economy would flat-line, breeding anger and discontent.

"The way to go in and turn that around is, you want to have somebody who is employed. That person who is employed will have less likelihood of becoming an insurgent."