Deputy PM says reforms needed for unemployment to drop from double-digit rates

ANKARA

Turkey’s labor market needs reforms to become more flexible and bring the unemployment rate below 10 percent, Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Mehmet Şimşek said on Feb. 15.

Speaking after the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) released the unemployment rate for the October-December 2015 period, Şimşek said he did not see a “bad trend” in unemployment.

“It is unlikely for Turkey to decrease the unemployment rate below 10 percent unless reforms are made. We need to make the job market more flexible to bring the unemployment rate below 10 percent,” he said, as quoted by Reuters. 

Turkey’s unemployment rate stood at 10.5 percent in the October-December 2015 period, unchanged from a month earlier and down from 10.7 percent in the same period a year earlier, TÜİK said. The non-agriculture unemployment rate, also measured on a three-month average, stood at 12.4 percent during the same period, down from 12.6 percent in the September-November 2015 period and 12.7 percent in the same period a year ago. 

While youth unemployment rate for those aged 15-24 was at 19.1 percent with a 0.8 percentage point decrease, the unemployment rate for the 15-64 age group was at 10.7 percent with a 0.2 percentage point decrease, according to TÜİK data. 

Labor force was measured as 29.8 million people, marking an increase of 831,000 persons, in the period of November 2015 compared to the same period of the previous year, according to TÜİK data. Labor force participation rate (LFPR) realized as 51.2 percent with 0.7 percentage point increase. 

Of those who were employed in this period, 19.3 percent were employed in agriculture, 20.1 percent were employed in industry, 7.5 percent were employed in construction and 53.1 percent were employed in services.