Turkey Sees Job Market Boost: Unemployment Rate Plummets to 8.8% in July
Turkey’s Unemployment Rate Falls to 8.8% in July
Turkey’s official seasonally adjusted (narrow) unemployment rate decreased to 8.8% in July, down from an 11-month high of 9.2% in June, according to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK).
The number of unemployed individuals fell by 112,000 month on month to 3.17 million in July, as reported by TÜİK.
The unemployment rate for men decreased by 0.5 percentage points from the previous month to 7%, while the rate for women remained stable at 12.4%.
The labor force participation rate increased to 54.4% in July, reflecting a slight increase of 0.1 percentage point since June. The employment rate also saw an increase, rising by 0.3 percentage points to 49.6%, which equates to 32.7 million people employed.
Youth unemployment, defined as those aged 15-24, fell slightly by 0.1 percentage point to 16.6%. Among youth, the unemployment rate was 12.2% for men and 25% for women.
Broadly Defined Unemployment Rate Reaches 26.5%
The Turkish Revolutionary Trade Union Confederation (DİSK) Research Center (DİSK-AR) calculated the broadly defined unemployment rate as 26.5% and the number of unemployed at 10.7 million in July, based on TÜİK data.
The narrow definition of unemployment considers unemployed individuals who were actively looking for work within a certain period of time, while a wider definition broadens this by including those who wanted employment but did not seek it actively during the reference period.
Broadly defined unemployment was calculated as 21.1% for men and 35.7% for women, with an impressive difference of 14.6 points.
Turkey has the fourth highest unemployment rate among Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries, and the broadly defined unemployment rate is twice the EU average and 3.4 times the US average.
