Turkey’s unemployment rate rises to 10.2 pct

The number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over was realized as 3.1 million persons, an increase of around 247,000 people in June compared with the same month of the previous year. The youth unemployment rate including people aged 15-24 rose to 19.4 percent with a 1.7 percentage point increase, the data showed. 

Unemployment also saw a 0.8 percentage point rise from May, according to the report.

The number of seasonally-adjusted unemployed persons was announced as over 3.3 million with a 166,000 increase in the period of June compared with the previous period. 

The unemployment rate was 10.9 percent with a 0.6 percentage point increase in this manner. 


Economic slowdown

Odeabank economist Şakir Turan said there was a rise in the number of seasonally-adjusted unemployed people due to a decrease in employment in the industrial, construction and agricultural sectors in parallel to some slowing down in economic activity, as reported by Reuters. 

“Thanks to some recovery in local tourism, we saw that the job losses in the tourism sector were lower than we had earlier projected. We however saw that the unemployment rate continued to increase in parallel to the slowing down in economic activities,” he said, as quoted by Reuters. 

The number of employed persons was realized as 27.6 million persons with a 390,000 increase in June compared with the same period of the previous year. 

The employment rate was 47.1 percent without any change.

According to the distribution of employment by sector, 20.2 percent were employed in agriculture, 19.3 percent were in industry, 7.5 percent were in construction and 53.1 percent were in services. Employment in services increased by 2.1 percentage points and construction increased by 0.2 percentage points while agriculture decreased by 1.8 percentage points and industry decreased by 0.4 percentage points.