Analysis of Factors Affecting the Floating of the Rural Employed Population, Case Study: Khorasan Razavi Province

During the past two decades, metropolitan areas of Iran, including Mashhad, have experienced significant growth in urban development. However, the decrease of job opportunities in the rural areas and, in some cases, the depletion of the rural income sources have led to the "floating population" phenomenon in Iran. Rural workers are short-term migrants to cities to gain job opportunities and raise their incomes, sometimes becoming long-term residents. Due to the lack of internal studies on the floating population, this study, based on the censuses of 2006 (1385) and 2011 (1390), sought to identify and analyze the factors affecting the floating population in Khorasan Razavi. The data were collected in 27 cities of the region and analyzed utilizing correlation, regression, and U Mann-Whitney Tests. According to the study, indicators such as the percentage of agricultural employees, industry employees, and literacy index showed a significant difference in favor of cities with a high floating employment rate. In addition, the percentage of agricultural, industrial, and service workers, and the literacy percentage index, both in the correlation test and in the regression test, showed a meaningful relationship with the dependent variable, the rate of floating employed population.