Turkey's unemployment sharply falls to 10.8 pct in January
| Sabah File Photo


Turkey's unemployment has declined to 10.8 percent in January, showing a 2.2 percentage points drop from the 13 percent figure from the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Monday.

The number of unemployed people stood at 3.409 million in January 2018. The figured showed a 576,000 decrease compared to the same period the previous year.

Unemployment in December was 10.4 percent, with overall average unemployment rate for 2017 hovering at 10.9 percent.

Non-agricultural employment declined by 2.5 percentage points to 12.7 percent in January.

Among the young populations, from ages 15 to 24, unemployment fell by 4.6 percentage points to 19.9 percent year-on-year.

Among the population aged 15-64, unemployment fell 2.2 percentage points to 11.1 percent.

The number of employed people increased by 1.6 percentage points year-on-year to reach 46.4 percent.

"The number of employed persons rose by 1.4 million to 28 million persons in the period of January 2018 compared with the same period of the previous year," TurkStat said.

Breaking down employment by sector, 17.7 percent of those employed were in agriculture, 19.9 percent in industry, 7.0 percent in construction and 55.4 percent in services.

TurkStat added that the labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 52.1 percent, up 0.6 percentage points over the same period in 2016.

The LFPR for men was 71.3 percent, down 0.2 percentage points, and the rate for women was 33.2 percent, up 1.2 percentage points compared with the same period the previous year, it said.

The rate of unregistered employment came in at 32.5 percent, recording no change from the same month in 2016, TurkStat added.