The unemployment rate in Türkiye in August dropped to single digits for the first time in four years and marked the lowest level in more than eight years, official data showed Monday.
The jobless rate fell 0.4 percentage points month-over-month to 9.6% in August, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.
The rate dropped to single digits for the first time since January 2018 and marked the lowest level since March 2014.
Treasury and Finance Minister Nureddin Nebati attributed gains in employment to the government’s new economic program that was unveiled last year.
The program, dubbed the Türkiye Economy Model, prioritizes low-interest rates to boost exports, production and investments, aiming to lower inflation and flip the country’s chronic current account deficits to a surplus.
The government has said the program helped save millions of jobs.
“Turkey has reached the single-digit unemployment figure for the first time after four years and seven months,” Nebati told an event in Istanbul on Monday. “There is a country view that continues to increase employment. Hopefully, we will continue this process quickly.”
The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over dropped by 100,000 month-over-month to 3.3 million as of August, the statistical authority said. The unemployment rate was estimated at 8.2% for men and at 12.5% for women.
A seasonally adjusted measure of labor underutilization fell to 19.8%, the data showed.
The labor underutilization measure, which stood at 22.4% in July, has been on a falling trend since peaking at 29.6% in January 2021 due to the economic fallout from pandemic measures.
The unemployment rate for July was revised to 10.0% from an initial 10.1%, data from the statistical institute also showed.
Nebati separately wrote on Twitter that Türkiye continued to “decouple” positively compared to other world economies thanks to the high growth and job gains he said the country achieved with the new economic program.
“We are determined to continue the employment growth trend, which has reached record high levels, with the policies we will implement. We will raise the welfare level of our citizens by reaching our investment, employment, production and export targets one by one,” Nebati said.
The labor force participation rate in August rose 0.4 percentage points from a month earlier to 53.0%.
The employment rate rose 0.5 percentage points from July to 47.9%, or 31 million people as of August.
The youth unemployment rate in the 15-24 age group was 18% with a 0.8 percentage point decrease compared to the previous month. The rate was estimated at 15.2% for men and at 23.3% for women.
The number of people in the labor force realized as nearly 34.33 million, with a 266,000 increase compared to the previous month.
