Turkey’s unemployment rate hits 10.8 pct in July

ANKARA

The annual unemployment rate in Turkey hit 10.8 percent with a 0.1 percent year-on-year increase, the country’s statistical authority stated on Oct. 15.

The unemployment rate was 10.2 percent in the previous month.

“The number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over increased by 88,000 to 3,531 million persons in the period of July 2018 in Turkey compared with the same period of the previous year. The unemployment rate occurred as 10.8 percent with 0.1 percentage point increase. In the same period, non-agricultural unemployment rate occurred as 12.9 percent with 0.1 percentage point decrease,” Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said.

“While youth unemployment rate including persons aged 15-24 was 19.9% with 1.2 percentage point decrease, the unemployment rate for persons aged 15-64 occurred as 11% with 0.1 percentage point increase,” it added in the statement on its website.

The number of employed persons rose by 507,000 to 29,2 million persons in the period of July 2018 compared with the same period of the previous year, according to the statement.

The employment rate occurred as 48.2 percent with 0.2 percentage point increase.

Employed people in the agricultural sector decreased by 247,000 persons and the number of non-agricultural employment increased by 755,000 thousand persons in this period.

According to the distribution of employment by sector; 19.7 percent was employed in agriculture, 19.5 percent was in industry, 6.9 percent was in construction and 53.9 percent was in services.

Employment in agriculture decreased by 1.2 percentage point and construction decreased by 0.7 percentage point while industry increased by 0.8 percentage point and services increased by 1.1 percentage point compared with the same period of the previous year.

The number of persons in the labor force realized nearly 32.8 million persons with 596,000 persons increase in the period of July 2018 compared with the same period of the previous year.

Labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 54 percent with 0.3 percentage point increase.

LFPR for male was 73.8 percent with 0.3 percentage point increase and the rate for female was 34.7 percent with 0.4 percentage point increase compared with the same period of the previous year.

The ratio of persons working without any social security relating to the main job occurred 34.3 percent with 0.9 percentage point decrease in the period of July 2018 compared with the same period of the previous year. In the non-agricultural sector, the rate of unregistered employment realized as 22.2 percent without any change compared to the same period of the previous year.

Seasonally adjusted employment rate occurred 47.4 percent without any change.

The number of seasonally adjusted unemployed persons increased by 53,000 to 3.5 million persons in the period of July 2018 compared with the previous period. The unemployment rate was 11 percent with 0.1 percentage point increase.