Over 407,000 new jobs created in Turkey in 2017: Minister

ANKARA

Over 407,000 new jobs were created between Jan. 1 and March 27 in Turkey, a top official has said, adding that around 1 million new jobs were expected to be offered by June. 

In a speech in Ankara on March 28, Labor Minister Mehmet Müezzinoğlu said that more than 407,000 new jobs were created since the beginning of 2017. 

“We expect this figure to hit 1 million by June,” he said in a follow-up televised interview on Habertürk TV, as quoted by Reuters. 

The government aims to create 2 million new jobs through an employment encouragement campaign, which was announced early in February by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

Turkey’s unemployment rate hit 12.7 percent in December 2016 - the highest since March 2010 - while youth unemployment stood at 24 percent, official data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed on March 15.

The data showed that the economy experienced a weak growth so as not to ease the unemployment rate, but the government’s campaign to boost employment could downward the rate by the second quarter of the year, according to analysts.