Turkey's jobless rate at 11 percent in 2018

ANKARA

Turkey’s unemployment rate was 11 percent - 3.54 million people - up 0.1 percentage point in 2018 versus the previous year, data from the Turkish Statistics Insitute (TÜİK) showed on March 25.

The region that includes the southeastern provinces of Mardin, Batman, Şırnak and Siirt had the highest unemployment rate with 25 percent, while the region that includes the northern provinces of Kastamonu, Çankırı, Sinop had the lowest unemployment rate with 5.1 percent.

Male unemployment rate was 9.5 percent and female was 13.9 percent last year.

Non-agricultural unemployment was 12.9 percent and youth unemployment rate - 15-24 age group - was 20.3 percent in 2018.

Data also showed that 549,000 new jobs were created last year in Turkey.

“Number of employed persons aged 15 years old and over realized as 28.74 million persons with 549,000 persons increase,” TÜİK said.

It said employment rate was 47.4 percent - 65.7 percent for male, and 29.4 percent for female - last year, up 0.3 percentage points versus 2017.

Of those who were employed in 2018, 18.4 percent were employed in agriculture, 19.7 percent in industry, 6.9 percent in construction and 54.9 percent were employed in service sector.

In the country, labor force participation rate also increased by 0.4 percentage points to reach 54.2 percent - 32.27 million persons - year-on-year in 2018.

The rate was 72.7 percent for male and 34.2 percent for female.