Turkish official unemployment rate drops to 8%

ISTANBUL - Agence France-Presse

Hürriyet Photo

Turkey's unemployment rate fell to 8.0 percent of the workforce in the three months from May to July, the lowest in more than a decade, official data showed today.
 
The number of unemployed people fell by 311,000 over the period to reach 2.226 million, Turkish Statistics Institute (TUIK) said on its website on the basis of a survey of 95,699 people.
 
Unemployed rate stood at 9.2 percent in the same period of 2011. Since then the number of people in jobs increased from 24.901 million to 25.577 million.
 
Turkey's economy staged a spectacular recovery from the global crisis, growing by 8.9 percent in 2010 and by 8.5 percent in 2011.
 
Unemployment remains a major challenge for the government in a 73 million strong country where many young people enter the workforce each year.
 
Turkey's jobless rate is determined through household surveys across the country which are then used to make a nationwide three-month projection.
 
But experts say the figures do not reflect the overall picture because of widespread undeclared or hidden unemployment, or the employment of highly-educated people in menial jobs.
 
Turkish unemployment rocketed to an annual 10.3 percent in 2001 following a major financial crisis, from a steady 6.5 percent in the previous year.