Turkey’s unemployment rate falls to 10.3 percent in November period

ANKARA

Turkey’s unemployment rate stood at 10.3 percent in the October-December period, down from 12.1 percent a year earlier and unchanged from a month earlier, data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) showed on Feb. 15.

The non-agricultural unemployment rate stood at 12.2 percent on average during the October-December period, the data also showed, down from 12.3 percent a month earlier and 14.3 percent the previous year.

The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 10.1 percent in November 2017, which included the October-December period, down from 11.8 percent in the same period of 2016 and from 10.3 percent in the previous month.

TÜİK data showed that that the number of unemployed people aged 15 years and over – 3.27 million last November - decreased by 440,000 year-on-year.

The youth unemployment rate, including people aged 15-24, was 19.3 percent, with a 3.3 percentage point decrease compared to the same period of 2016. The unemployment rate for people aged 15-64 was 10.5 percent, with 1.8 percentage point decrease, according to TÜİK data.

The number of employed people rose by nearly 1.5 million in the same period, moving the employment rate to 47.3 percent with a 1.5 percentage point annual increase, the statement noted.

The number of employed people rose to 28.52 million people in the period of November 2017 compared with the same period of the previous year.

According to the distribution of employment by sector; 18.6 percent was employed in agriculture, 19.2 percent was in industry, 7.6 percent was in construction and 54.6 percent was in service, TÜİK data showed.

The institute also noted that the labor force participation rate was 52.8 percent, with a 0.7 percentage points increase over the same period.

The labor force participation rate for men was 72.1 percent, with a 0.2 percentage point increase from the same period of the previous year. The rate for women was 33.8 percent, with 1.1 percentage point rise.