Unemployment rate in Turkey hit a new high in September

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) has released on Monday its Unemployment and Labor Statistics for September 2019. According to the figures, unemployment rate is now 13.8%.

TÜİK figures show that the number of unemployed people aged 15 and older increased by 817.000 to 4 million 566 thousand in September 2019 when compared with the same month last year. In September, the unemployment rate was 13.8 percent, marking a 2.4 point increase.

TÜİK figures also show that in the same period, non-agricultural unemployment rate hit 16.4 percent, recording a 2.9 point increase.

While youth unemployment rate among people aged 15 to 24 was 26.1 percent with a 4.5 point increase, the unemployment rate for people aged 15 to 64 was 14.1 percent with a 2.4 point increase.

In September, the number of employed decreased by 623 thousand to 28 million 440 thousand people when compared with the same period last year. The employment rate was 46.1 percent with a 1.7 point decrease.

The number of agricultural employment decreased by 108 thousand people and the number of non-agricultural employment decreased by 516 thousand people in this period.

According to the distribution of employment by sector; 19.3 percent of workers are employed in agriculture, 19.5 percent in industry, 5.5 percent in construction and 55.7 percent in services.

In September 2019, the number of people constituting the labour force was 33 million 6 thousand, marking an increase of 193 thousand people when compared with the same period of the previous year.

Labour force participation rate was 53.5 percent with a 0.5 point decrease. While this rate for men was 72.6 percent with a 0.9 point decrease, the rate for women was 34.9 percent, the same as last year.