Turkey’s unemployment rate declined 0.3 percentage points to 8.5 percent in August compared to the previous month, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported, citing official figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
TurkStat released its “Labour Force Statistics, August 2024” on Thursday.
The number of unemployed persons aged 15 and over fell by 89,000 to 3 million in August compared to the previous month. Compared to August 2023, the unemployment rate slipped 0.7 points, according to TurkStat.
The unemployment rate was 7 percent among men and 11.4 percent among women.
Unemployment among young people aged 15-24 rose slightly to 16.5 percent.
Employment figures showed improvement, with the number of individuals with jobs rising by 78,000 to 32.7 million in August.
The employment rate rose by 0.1 points to 49.7 percent, while labor force participation declined slightly to 54.3 percent.
Although TurkStat data paint a positive picture of the unemployment rate in general, the institution’s statistics are met with skepticism. It faces frequent accusations of masking the real unemployment and inflation rates in order to hide the economic deterioration in the country.
The lowest annual unemployment rate in the past decade in Turkey was in 2013, when it stood at 8.9 percent, while the highest was in 2019 at 13.7 percent. It was recorded at 9.4 percent in 2023.
