Turkey's unemployment rate reached 13 percent in January, up by 1.9 percentage points year-on-year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced in a statement on Monday.
This rate was the highest seen since February 2010, when unemployment stood at 13.5 percent.
The non-agricultural unemployment rate hit 15.2 percent, a 2.2-percentage-point rise compared to the same month last year.
The number of jobless people in the country aged 15 or over rose to nearly 4 million in January this year, an increase of 695,000 from January 2016, according to the statement. The rate also saw a 0.3 percentage point rise from December 2016.
January's employment rate increased 0.2 percent from the same period last year, with the country adding 397,000 jobs.
The labor force participation rate was also up by 0.8 percentage points year-on-year, reaching 51.5 percent.
The number of women participating in the workforce increased by 1 percentage point from the previous year to 32 percent.
In a note sent to clients, KapitalFX's deputy research manager Enver Erkan stressed that the results of employment policies will be evident in the data for February and March. Drawing attention to the rising trend in labor force participation, he underscored that this trend is expected to continue in the upcoming months, therefore an unemployment rate of 13-14 percent should be seen.
Erkan further noted that improvement in public employment and employment campaigns are of great significance, and in that regard an incremental decrease in unemployment is highly likely to occur.
