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Turkey’s broadly defined unemployment rate rose to 29.7 percent in 2025, up 3 percentage points from a year earlier, according to official figures released by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
The measure, which captures labor underutilization beyond the standard jobless rate, points to continued strain in the labor market despite a drop in narrow unemployment.
TurkStat released its “Labour Force Statistics, 2025” report on Wednesday.
According to the data, the number of narrowly defined unemployed people, meaning people age 15 and above who did not have a job and were actively seeking one, fell by 147,000 from the previous year to 2.96 million in 2025, while the unemployment rate dropped by 0.4 percentage points to 8.3 percent. It was estimated at 6.8 percent for men and 11.3 percent for women.
Broadly defined unemployment, which also includes people who are available to work but have stopped actively looking for a job as well as people in time-related underemployment, stood at 29.7 percent in 2025. TurkStat said the combined rate of time-related underemployment and unemployment was 19.6 percent, while the combined rate of unemployment and potential labor force was 19.9 percent.
The number of employed people fell by 54,000 from a year earlier to 32.5 million in 2025, and the employment rate declined by 0.5 percentage points to 49.0 percent. The rate was 66.4 percent among men and 32.1 percent among women.
The labor force fell by 200,000 to 35.5 million, while the labor force participation rate dropped by 0.7 percentage points to 53.5 percent. Youth unemployment among people ages 15 to 24 stood at 15.3 percent, down 1 point from the previous year.
The data also showed that 59.0 percent of all employment was in the services sector in 2025, while 20.2 percent was in industry, 14.0 percent in agriculture and 6.8 percent in construction.
Although TurkStat data paint a better picture in the narrow unemployment rate, the institution’s figures are often met with skepticism. Critics and independent economists have long accused the agency of understating the depth of Turkey’s economic problems, especially by relying on a narrow definition of unemployment that excludes discouraged workers and others who want a job but are not counted as actively searching.