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Turkey’s broadly defined unemployment rate was 29.1 percent in November, with a 0.6 percentage point decrease compared to the previous month, according to official figures from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
TurkStat released its “Labour Force Statistics, November 2025” report on Tuesday.
According to the data, the number of narrowly defined unemployed people, which refers to individuals aged 15 and above who were not employed during the referenced period, actively searched for a job through at least one job-seeking channel in the past four weeks and were ready to start work within the next two weeks, increased by 54,000 to 3.098 million in November compared to the previous month, while the narrowly defined unemployment rate ticked up to 8.6 percent.
Broadly defined unemployment, which also includes those who have lost hope of finding a job, are not actively seeking employment but are ready to work, seasonal workers and those with time-related underemployment, decreased from 29.7 percent in October.
The number of employed persons rose by 75,000 to 32.737 million in November compared to the previous month. Employment stood at 49.2 percent, 66.8 percent among men and 31.9 percent among women.
The labor force grew by 128,000 to 35.834 million and the labor force participation rate rose to 53.8 percent.
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.