Turkey’s unemployment rate hit 9.9 percent in 2014

ANKARA

Hürriyet Photo

The unemployment rate was 9.9 percent in 2014, rising from 9.7 percent in the previous year, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) announced on March 6.

The number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over was 2.8 million people in 2014, according to the TÜİK data.

The unemployment rate was announced at 9 percent for males and 11.9 percent for females. While the youth unemployment rate between the ages of 15-24 was 17.9 percent, the unemployment rate for the age group of 15-64 was 10.1 percent.

The total number of employed persons aged 15 and over was 25.9 million and the employment rate was 45.5 percent. The employment rate was 64.8 percent for males, and 26.7 percent for females.

Of all people who were employed in 2014, 21.1 percent were in the agricultural sector, 27.9 percent in the industrial sector and 51 percent in the services sector.

While the highest unemployment rate was in southeast Anatolia with 15.6 percent, the lowest unemployment rate was in in the northeast Anatolia region, with 5.3 percent. The highest unemployment rate for males was in southeast Anatolia with 16.4 percent and for females was in Istanbul with 15.6 percent, according to the official data.

The regions which had the highest unemployment rate was in the eastern provinces of Mardin, Batman, Şırnak and Siirt with 24 percent and the southeastern provinces of Şanlıurfa and Diyarbakır with 17.4 percent.

Istanbul provided the highest employment rate with around 19.7 percent in 2014, followed by the capital city of Ankara with 6.9 percent and the Aegean city of İzmir with 5.8 percent.