By Muhammed Ali Gurtas
ANKARA
Turkey's unemployment rate fell to 9.6 percent in April, dropping 0.9 percentage points year-on-year, the country's statistical authority announced on Monday.
TurkStat said the number of unemployed persons aged 15 years and over declined by some 200,000 on a yearly basis, amounting to 3.08 million in April.
"In the same period, non-agricultural unemployment rate occurred as 11.4 percent with one percentage point decrease," the institute said.
"While youth unemployment rate, including persons aged 15-24 was 16.9 percent with 2.9 percentage point decrease, the unemployment rate for persons aged 15-64 occurred as 9.8 percent with 0.9 percentage point decrease," it added.
TurkStat noted that the number of employed people rose by some 850,000 to around 29 million over the same period, taking the employment rate to 47.9 percent with a 0.7-percentage point annual increase.
"According to the distribution of employment by sector; 18.3 percent was employed in agriculture, 19.5 percent was in industry, 7.4 percent was in construction and 54.8 percent was in services," it said.
The labor force participation rate (LFPR) was 52.2 percent, a 0.3-percentage point annual rise, while the number of people in the labor force totaled nearly 32.1 million -- rising some 650,000.
Official figures showed that the LFPR for males was 72.4 percent with a 0.1-percentage point increase and for females was 34 percent with an annual hike of 0.6-percentage point.
TurkStat also reported that the rate of unregistered employment -- people working without social security related to their principal occupation -- was 33.3 percent in April, marking a 0.6-percentage point decrease year-on-year.
The institute will release next report on this subject on August 15.
Last year, the lowest unemployment rate was seen in May and June with 10.2 percent. Over the past five years, the highest unemployment rate was 13 percent in January 2017, while the lowest was seen in June 2013 with 8.1 percent.
As noted in Turkey's medium-term economic program, the government is aiming to reduce annual unemployment rate to 9.6 percent by the end of 2020. The annual rate was 10.9 percent last year.
