Turkey’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage points month-on-month to 8.5 percent in April, according to Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data.
TurkStat released its “Labor Force Statistics, April 2024” on Monday.
The number of unemployed persons aged 15 and over decreased by 18,000 to 3.042 million in April 2024 compared to the previous month. The unemployment rate was 7.2 percent among men and 11.1 percent among women.
The number of employed persons decreased by 1,000 to 32.618 million in April compared to the previous month. Employment stood at 49.5 percent with a 0.1 percentage point decrease. The employment rate was 66.9 percent among men, 32.5 percent among women.
The TurkStat data also showed the labor force participation rate was unchanged at 54.2 percent in April, while a seasonally adjusted measure of labor underutilization rose 3.1 percentage points to 27.2 percent.
The lowest annual unemployment rate in the past decade was in 2013, when it stood at 8.9 percent, while the highest rate was in 2019 13.7 percent. It was recorded at 9.4 percent in 2023.
Although TurkStat data paint a positive picture of the unemployment rate in the country, the institution’s statistics are met with skepticism. It faces accusations of masking the real unemployment and inflation rates in order to hide the economic deterioration in the country.