Türkiye’s unemployment rate falls to 9.6 percent

ANKARA

Türkiye’s unemployment rate fell to 9.6 percent in August, the lowest reading since March 2014, according to data released yesterday.

Decreasing from a downwardly revised 10 percent in July, the jobless rate saw a single-digit after four years in August, data by the Turkish Statistical Agency (TÜİK) showed.

The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over dropped by 100,000 month-on-month to 3.3 million as of August.
The youth unemployment rate, age 15-24, was 18 percent during the same period, down 0.8 percentage points. This was 15.2 percent for men and 23.3 percent for women.

The labor force participation rate reached 53 percent in August, up 0.4 percentage points from a month ago.

The employment rate rose 0.5 percentage points from July to 47.9 percent, or 31 million people as of August.

Seasonally and calendar adjusted average weekly actual working hours of persons at work during the reference period increased by 0.9 hours and estimated 44.1 hours compared to the previous month.

In August, the rate of composite measure of labor underutilization consisting of time-related underemployment, potential labor force and unemployment was 19.8 percent with 2.6 percentage point decrease compared to the previous month.

While combined rate of time-related underemployment and unemployment realized as 13.3 percent, combined rate of unemployment and potential labor force estimated as 16.4 percent.