Turkish unemployment rate falls to 10.2 percent in May

ANKARA

Turkey’s unemployment rate dropped to 10.2 percent in May, which covered the April-June period, falling further from a seven-year high at the start of the year but up from 9.4 percent in the same month last year, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK) showed on Aug. 15.

Turkey’s unemployment figure showed a steady decrease during the first five consecutive months of 2017, with the jobless rate standing at 10.5 percent in the March-May period. 

However, the youth unemployment rate for people aged 15-24 was 19.8 percent, with a 2.4 percentage point increase in May compared to the same period of 2016. The number of jobless people aged 15 and above jumped to 3.2 million in the month, marking an increase of 330,000 from the same month last year, according to TÜİK data. 

The unemployment rate for people aged 15-64 was 10.4 percent, with a 0.8 percentage point year-on-year increase.

Non-agricultural unemployment rate stood at 12.2 percent on average during the April-June period, the data showed. The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 11.3 percent without any change.
 
The number of employed people rose by 621,000 to nearly 28.5 million in the period of May 2017 compared with the same period of the previous year. 

The employment rate was 47.7 percent with a 0.2 percentage point increase, according to TÜİK data. 

Labor force participation advanced by 0.5 percentage point year-on-year to 53 percent in the month.  
     
The TÜİK report also revealed that the number of women in the workforce rose by 1 percentage point from the previous year to 33.9 percent.  
     
Commenting on the new figures, Ferhat Yükseltürk, the managing director of Turkey Macro View Consulting, said they expected further improvement in the employment market for the rest of the year in light of GDP growth rate estimates.  
     
“In 2017, we expect 5.7-percent growth through strong incentives to boost domestic demand as well as a better-than-projected environment in our main trading partners,” Yükseltürk said, as quoted by state-run Anadolu Agency on Aug. 15.         

He said the number of employed people had jumped by 599,000 in the five months, whereas the number of unemployed fell by 124,000 as of May.      
  
This was “on the back of expansionary policy measures, mainly via fiscal tools,” Yükseltürk added.  
       
 Orkun Gödek, vice president of Private Banking Capital Markets Products Sales at DenizBank, said a stronger recovery was expected in the labor market after the government’s unemployment incentives, but figures underperformed against expectations.  
     
“The unemployment rate might decrease in the summer period,” Gödek added, as quoted by Anadolu Agency.