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The unemployment rate in Turkey rose to 9.2 percent in June, a 0.8 percentage point increase, official figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) show.
TurkStat released its “Labor Force Statistics, June 2024” report on Monday.
Official data show the unemployment rate, which was on a downward trend, registering 8.6 percent in March, 8.5 percent in April and 8.4 percent in May, increasing to 9.2 percent in June.
The number of unemployed persons aged 15 and over increased by 234,000 to 3.3 million in June compared to the previous month. The unemployment rate was 7.6 percent among men and 12.4 percent among women.
The number of employed persons decreased by 341,000 to 32.522 million in June compared to a month earlier. Employment stood at 50 percent, demonstrating a 0.4 percentage point increase. It was 66.9 percent among men and 32.1 percent among women.
The TurkStat data also showed the labor force participation rate declined to 54.4 percent in June, with a 0.2 percentage point decrease. There were 35.827 million people in Turkey’s labor force in June with a decrease of 107,000 people compared to May.
The lowest annual unemployment rate in the past decade was in 2013, when it stood at 8.9 percent, while the highest was in 2019 at 13.7 percent. It was recorded at 9.4 percent in 2023.
Although TurkStat data paint a positive picture of the unemployment rate in general, the institution’s statistics are met with skepticism. It faces frequent accusations of masking the real unemployment and inflation rates in order to hide the economic deterioration in the country.