Turkish unemployment rate dips to 11.7 pct in March period, further dropping from 7-year high

ANKARA

Turkey’s unemployment rate dropped to 11.7 percent in the February-April period, dipping further from a seven-year high at the start of the year but up from 10.1 percent a year earlier, official data showed on June 15. 

The non-agricultural unemployment rate stood at 13.7 percent on average during the three-month period, up from 11.9 percent a year earlier, according to data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TÜİK). 

The youth unemployment rate rose to 21.4 percent in the March period, which covered data for February, March and April, from 17 percent the previous year.

The number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over increased by 619,000 to around 3.64 million in the period of March 2017 in Turkey compared with the same period of 2016.

The number of seasonally adjusted unemployed persons decreased by 34,000 to nearly 3.62 million in March 2017 compared with the previous period, according to TÜİK data. 

The seasonally-adjusted unemployment rate was 11.5 percent with a 0.2 percentage point decrease.
The number of employed persons rose by 496,000 to around 27.48 million in the period of March 2017 compared with the same period of the previous year. 


Employment rate at 46.1 percent

The employment rate occurred unchanged as 46.1 percent, TÜİK data showed. 

The number of agricultural employment decreased by 8,000 and the number of non-agricultural employment increased by 503,000 in this period compared to the same period of 2016. 

According to the distribution of employment by sector, 18.5 percent were employed in agriculture, 19.4 percent were in industry, 7.3 percent were in construction and 54.8 percent were in services.

Employment in agriculture decreased by 0.4 percentage points and industry decreased by 0.2 percentage points, while construction increased by 0.2 percentage points and services increased by 0.4 percentage points, TÜİK data showed. 

The number of persons in the labor force amounted 31.13 million with a 1.11 million increase in the period of March 2017 compared with the same period of the previous year. 

The labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 52.2 percent with 0.9 percentage point increase. 

The LFPR for males was 71.9 percent with a 0.4 percentage point increase, while the rate for females was 32.9 percent with a 1.3 percentage point increase compared with the same period of the previous year, according to TÜİK data.