Unemployment in Turkey stood at 12.9% in May, the country’s statistical authority announced Monday.
The figure was up 0.1 percentage points from the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said. May’s non-agricultural unemployment rate was 15.2% with 0.2 percentage point increase.
EMPLOYMENT RATE FELL 4.7 PERCENTAGE POINTS TO 41.4 PERCENT
The rate of young people who were neither employed nor in education reached 29.1%, up 5.1 percentage points from last year’s May rate of 24%.
TurkStat data revealed that the labor force participation rate was 47.6% during the month, down 5.3 percentage points from 52.9% in May 2019.
The number of women participating in the workforce dropped by 5.1 percentage points from last year to 33.7%.
Meanwhile, the total number of people employed in the public sector was 4.8 million, with a 4.3% percentage point increase in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.
Under its economic program, the Turkish government targets an unemployment rate for this year of 11.8%. The program projects a gradual unemployment drop to 9.8% in 2022.