Turkey Jobless Rate Rises to 11.3%

Turkey’s unemployment rate rose to 11.3% in August year-on-year, an increase of 1.2 percentage points, the Turkish Statistical Institute announced Tueaday, Anadolu Agency reported. The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over rose to 3.49 million in August 2016, up by 435,000 from August 2015, pushing the unemployment rate to 11.3%. Unemployment also saw a 0.6 percentage point jump from the previous month, according to TUIK. The report showed that unemployment rose for the fourth month in a row in August after falling to 9.3% in April. July’s employment rate was 46.7%, down 0.1% from the same period last year, despite the Turkish economy adding 323,000 jobs–an indication that growth in the number of people seeking a job has outpaced job creation. Turkey’s labor force participation rate rose by 0.5 percentage points in August year-on-year to 52.6%, with the number of people in the labor force totaling 30.96 million, a rise of 759,000 in 2016 compared with the same period the previous year.