The unemployment rate in Türkiye decreased by 0.3 percentage points month-on-month to 7.9% in March, marking the lowest reading since 2005, according to official data on Tuesday.
The number of unemployed persons aged 15 years and over decreased by 65,000 to 2.8 million in March, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
The rate was estimated at 6.5% for men and 10.6% for women, according to TurkStat. The number of employed persons, on the other hand, increased by 391,000 to nearly 32.6 million on a monthly basis, the data showed.
The seasonally adjusted labor force participation rate rose 0.4 percentage points to 53.4%.
The youth unemployment rate, for the 15-24 age group, stood at 15.1%, a 0.1 percentage point increase from the previous month.
The jobless rate in Türkiye has seen a sustained positive trend in recent months, with a rate of 8.7% for the whole of 2024, which is below the figure estimated in the medium-term program (MTP).
The latest reading was welcomed by Vice President Cevdet Yılmaz, who, in a post on X, highlighted that the "labor force participation rates of our youth are increasing and the employment rate is rising."
"According to seasonally adjusted data, the unemployment rate in March 2025 fell to 7.9%, the lowest level since 2005, when monthly labor force statistics began to be announced," Yılmaz said.
"Our employment increased by approximately 400,000 people compared to the previous month, reaching 32.6 million," he added.
The Turkish government aims to boost employment, production and exports while curbing inflation.
"Thanks to the intensive investments we have made in line with the importance we attach to education, the number of young people graduating from higher education in our country has increased rapidly in recent years," the vice president also said.
"We are determined to continue our policies that will increase our employment and advance our social welfare as foreseen in our medium-term program. In this process, we will continue to closely monitor the transformation in the labor market and take multifaceted measures to protect and increase our employment," he wrote.
