Turkey: Unemployment rate at 13.9% in July

ISTANBUL

Turkey's unemployment rate was 13.9% this July, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced on Tuesday.

The unemployment rate rose 3.1 percentage points compared to July 2018, TurkStat stated.

The number of unemployed age 15 and over rose 1.06 million to 4.59 million as of July compared to July 2018, according to the institute.

The non-agricultural unemployment rate also rose 3.6 percentage points to 16.5%, year-on-year in July.

"While [the] youth unemployment rate including those aged 15-24 was 27.1% with a 7.2 percentage points rise, the unemployment rate for those aged 15-64 occurred as 14.2% with a 3.2 percentage points rise," the institute added.

In June, the country's unemployment rate was 13%, with 4.25 million unemployed people aged 15 and above.

Labor force reaches 33M

The number of employed people in Turkey was 28.5 million, down 748,000 year-on-year, it said and noted: "The employment rate occurred as 46.4% with a 1.8 percentage point decrease."

Breaking employment down by sector, 19.8% were employed in agriculture, 19.6% in industry, 5.5% in construction, and 55.1% in services, it added.

Turkey's labor force grew 317,000 year-on-year to 33 million people as of July.

The country's labor force participation rate was 53.8% in the same month -- 73.2% for men and 34.9% for women.

The rate of unregistered employment -- people working without social security related to their principal occupation -- was 36% in July, up 1.7 percentage points on a yearly basis.

Last year, Turkey's unemployment rate hovered between 9.6% and 13.5%.

Since 2014, the highest figures were seen in January and February this year with 14.7%, while the lowest was in May 2014 with 8.8%.

Turkey's new economic program, announced at the end of September, targets an unemployment rate of 12.9% for the end of 2019, 11.8% in 2020, 10.6% in 2021, and 9.8% in 2022.

TurkStat will release its next report on the subject on Nov. 15.