Turkey’s unemployment falls to 10.8 percent in January
ANKARA
Turkey’s unemployment rate stood at 10.8 percent in January, down 2.2 percentage points from same month last year, the country’s statistical authority announced on April 16.
The seasonally adjusted unemployment rate was 9.9 percent in the January period without any change compared to the previous period.
Unemployment in December 2017 was 10.4 percent with a 2.3 percent year-on-year decrease.
The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) said the number of unemployed persons aged 15 years and over—3.4 million in January—slipped by 576,000 year-on-year.
The youth unemployment rate—the 15-24 age group—was 19.9 percent, down 4.6 percentage points year-on-year in January.
TÜİK said unemployment for the 15-64 age group was also down 2.2 percentage points to 11.1 percent in the same period.
The male unemployment rate was 9.6 percent, down 2.3 percentage points, and the female unemployment rate was 13.4 percent, down 2 percentage points, the TÜİK said.
Official data also showed that non-agricultural unemployment slipped 2.5 percentage points to 12.7 percent during the same period.
January’s employment rate rose 1.6 percentage point from the same month last year to 46.4 percent.
“The number of employed persons rose by 1.4 million to 28 million persons in the period of January 2018 compared with the same period of the previous year,” it said.
More than 55 percent of total employment was in the services sector, 19.9 percent in industry, 17.7 percent in agriculture, and 7 percent in construction.
The labor force participation rate was also up by 0.6 of a percentage point year-on-year, raising it to 52.1 percent.
The number of women participating in the workforce climbed 1.2 percentage points from January 2017 to 33.2 percent in the month.
