One in four Turkish youth unemployed as unemployment rate rises to 13 pct

ANKARA

Close to a quarter of Turkey’s youth did not have a job in January, according to data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) that was released on April 17. 

Youth unemployment jumped 5.3 percentage points year on year in January to 24.5 percent overall, according to TÜİK.

Overall, Turkey’s unemployment rate jumped to 13 percent in the month, registering a 1.9 year-on-year increase, the highest since February 2010.

The country’s non-agricultural unemployment was also announced at 15.2 percent, representing a 2.2 percentage point increase, TÜİK said.

Turkey’s seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 11.8 percent in the January 2017 period – a 0.2 percentage point decrease.

The employment rate came in at 44.8 percent with a 0.2 percent decrease, according to TÜİK. 

The number of employed persons amounted to 26.7 million following a 397,000-person increase in January 2017 compared with the same period of the previous year. 

The number of persons in the labor force was announced as 30.7 million after an increase of more than 1 million people in January 2017 compared to the same period of the previous year. The labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 51.5 percent, good for a 0.8 percentage point increase, the data also showed.

The LFPR for men was 71.5 percent – a 0.7 percentage point increase – while the rate for women was 32 percent – a 1 percentage point increase compared to the same period of the previous year.