Turkey’s unemployment rate rose by 3.3 percent year-on-year, reaching 13 percent in April, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced on Tuesday.
Official figures indicated that the number of unemployed aged 15 or older surged by 1.1 million year-on-year to 4.2 million in April, the state-run Anadolu news agency reported.
“In the same period, [the] non-agricultural unemployment rate was 15% with [a] 3.6 percentage point increase.
“While [the] youth unemployment rate consisting of persons aged 15-24 was 23.2% with [a] 6.3 percentage point increase, the unemployment rate for persons aged 15-64 was 13.3% with [a] 3.5 percentage point increase,” the institute said.
In March, the country’s unemployment rate stood at 14.1 percent, with 4.54 million people aged 15 or over unemployed.
A total of 28.2 million people were employed, with an annual decrease of 810,000.
“The employment rate was 46% with [a] 1.9 percentage point decrease,” TurkStat said.
“According to the distribution of employment by sector, 17.6% were employed in agriculture, 19.7% in industry, 5.7% in construction and 56.9% were employed in services,” it added.
The rate of unregistered employment — people working without social security related to their principal occupation — was 34.2 percent in April, going up 0.9 percentage points on a yearly basis.
Last year, Turkey’s unemployment rate hovered between 9.6 percent and 13.5 percent.
The highest figures since 2014 were seen in January and February of this year with 14.7 percent, while the lowest was in May 2014 with 8.8 percent.