15 January 2019•Update: 15 January 2019
By Gokhan Ergocun
ANKARA
Turkey’s unemployment rate stood at 11.6 percent in October, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said on Tuesday.
"The unemployment rate occurred as 11.6 percent with a 1.3 percentage point increase," year-on-year, TurkStat said.
The number of jobless people age 15 and over rose 501,000 to 3.79 million year-on-year in October, it added.
In September, the unemployment rate was at 11.4 percent.
The youth unemployment rate -- persons age 15-24 -- reached 22.3 percent in October, up 3 percentage points versus the same month in 2017, TurkStat noted.
Meanwhile, the number of employed persons rose to 28.87 million in the month, up 225,000 on a yearly basis in October, indicating a 47.5 percent employment rate in the country, it underlined.
"According to the distribution of employment by sector, 18.5 percent were employed in agriculture, 19.7 percent in industry, 6.7 percent in construction, and 55 percent in services," TurkStat said.
The country's labor force participation rate climbed 0.6 percentage points year-on-year to 53.7 percent in October.
The number of people in the labor force amounted to 32.66 million in the same month, an annual increase of 726,000.
The TurkStat report also said the number of women participating in the workforce climbed 0.6 percentage points from October 2017 to 34.8 percent.
