Turkey’s unemployment rate rose to an eleven-month high of 11.1 percent in January from 10.8 percent in December, the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) has announced.
The labor participation rate was 50.7 percent, with 26.3 million people employed and 3.3 million people out of work, TurkStat data showed.
The unemployment rate is slightly down from 11.3 percent in the same month last year, the institute said.
Thousands of people including mostly journalists have lost their jobs in Turkey over the past months due to the Justice and Development Party’s (AK Party) crackdown on critical media outlets. The management of some media outlets have been taken over by the government in a politically-motivated move. The new managements made up of government-appointed trustees, have laid of thousands of journalists.