Turkey: Unemployment rate at 11.4 percent in Sept.

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA

The unemployment rate in Turkey stood at 11.4 percent in September, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Monday.

TurkStat said the figure was up 0.8 percentage points from September 2017.

The number of jobless aged 15 and over in the country rose to 3.75 million, an annual rise of 330,000.

Unemployment was 11.1 percent in August.

Turkstat revealed that the youth unemployment rate, including persons aged 15-24, reached 21.6 percent with a 1.6-percentage point increase during the same period.

The employment rate in September dropped to 47.8 percent -- more than 29 million people --, down 0.1 percentage points from the same month last year.

"According to the distribution of employment by sector; 19.2 percent was employed in agriculture, 19.6 percent in industry, 6.9 percent in construction and 54.3 percent in services," TurkStat said.

The country's labor force participation rate increased by 0.4 percentage points year-on-year to 54 percent in September.

The number of people in the labor force amounted to 32.8 million with an increase of 598,000 in the same period.

The TurkStat report also revealed that the number of women participating in the workforce climbed 0.4 percentage points from September last year to 34.9 percent.