Turkey's unemployment stood at 10.8 percent in December 2015 with a slight 0.1 percent decrease, according to a report issued Tuesday by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).

The number of unemployed people aged 15 years old and over reached to 3.204 million, with an increase of 59,000 in December 2015 compared to same month of 2014. In the same period, non-agricultural unemployment rate stood at 12.7 percent with a 0.2 percent decrease. While youth unemployment rate including 15-24 age group stood at 19.2 percent a with 1 percent decrease, while unemployment rate for 15-64 age group stood at 11 percent with 0.2 percent decrease.

The number of employed people aged 15 years old and over stood at 26.448 million with and increase of 806,000 compared to December 2014. Employment rate stood at 45.4 percent with an increase of 0.7 percent.

Of those who were employed in this period; 18.9 percent were employed in agriculture, 20.1 percent were employed in industry, 7.1 percent were employed in construction and 53.9 percent were employed in services. Employment in services sector increased by 1.1 percent while agricultural employment decreased by 0.6 percent and industrial employment decreased by 0.5 percent.

Turkey's labor force stood at 29.652 million with an increase of 865,000 compared to the same period of the previous year. Labor force participation rate (LFPR) stood at 50.9 percent with an increase of 0.7 percent. LFPR stood at 71 percent for males and 31.2 percent for females.

"The unemployment rate caused no surprise, above from the previous level of 10.5 percent and below both market and our expectations of 11 percent," ALB Securities analyst Enver Erkan told Anadolu Agency (AA). "Our concerns had focused on the negative effect of the refugee crisis and the huge increase in the minimum wage … we will see the real negative impacts of the minimum wage increase in 2016 data. This will limit the employment increase and also increase unrecorded employment," Erkan added.

Erkan stressed that the country's youth unemployment shows some improvement, "but we think that this was caused by the decline of the youth participation rate in the labor force," he said. "We expect 3.3 percent GDP [gross domestic product] growth for the fourth quarter of 2015; it's not enough to pull unemployment down. The unemployment rate is in an upward trend and this will remain in 2016."