Turkey's unemployment rate falls, outdoes European Union

Turkey's unemployment rate decreased 0.2 percent from the previous month to 8.8 percent in May 2014, Turkey's statistical institute TurkStat announced on Friday. According to data, slightly more than 48,000 new jobs were created in May and the number of unemployed, aged 15 and more, decreased to 2,551,000. The EU, which Turkey is negotiating to join, has been registering significantly higher unemployment rates since the 2007 financial crisis. The male unemployment rate in May was 8 percent while the female unemployment rate was 10.5 percent. In the same period, the youth unemployment rate, between the ages of 15 and 24, was calculated at 15.8 percent while the unemployment rate between the ages of 15 and 64 was 8.9 percent.

Greece ranked first with a 27.3 percent unemployment rate among the EU countries. Spain and Croatia have the second and third highest unemployment rates in the EU, respectively 24.7 percent and 16.6 percent. Austria, Germany and Malta had the lowest unemployment rate in May respectively with 4.9 percent, 5.1 percent and 5.7 percent, according to data released by EuroStat. Turkey outdid 14 EU member countries and 10 eurozone countries in terms of unemployment rate in May. While the youth unemployment rate in the eurozone was around 23.1 percent, the youth unemployment rate in Turkey was around 15.5 percent in May. Only five countries in the eurozone have lower youth unemployment rates than Turkey.

According to the data announced by the European Statistics Office (Eurostat), among the countries that have higher youth unemployment rates than Turkey are Italy and France. wxcept Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, Holland and Austria.

Germany has 7.8 percent, Austria has 9 percent, Holland has 10.5 percent, Malta has 13.3 percent and Luxembourg has 14.8 percent youth unemployment. France, which has one of the most prominent economies in Europe is facing a 22.4 percent youth unemployment rate while Italy is facing rates that are almost three times higher than the rate in Turkey with 43.7 percent youth unemployment. Portugal, which has suffered severely from the latest economic crisis has 33.5 percent youth unemployment, almost twice that of Turkey, while Spain, which has again faced significant problems lately, is striving against youth unemployment rates around 53.5 percent. Southern Cyprus, another problematic country, has doubled the rates of Turkey with 35.4 percent and in Greece the rate is three times that of Turkey at around 56.3 percent. In the EU, along with Germany, Luxembourg, Malta, the Netherlands and Austria, only Denmark in has a lower youth unemployment rate than Turkey at around 12.6 percent. One of the leading economies in the EU, the U.K., is facing youth unemployment of around 17.9 percent, which is again higher than Turkey. With about 23.5 percent, Sweden's youth unemployment rate is also higher than Turkey.