Turkey’s unemployment rate fell to 8.6 percent in March, near lowest in a decade: TurkStat

Turkey’s unemployment rate fell 0.1 percentage point month-on-month to 8.6 percent in March, edging toward the lowest level in a decade, reached in October 2023, according to data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).

According to “Labor Force Statistics, March 2024” issued by the TurkStat on Friday, the number of unemployed persons aged 15 and over decreased by 19,000 to 3.057 million in March 2024 compared to the previous month. The unemployment rate was 6.8 percent among men and 12 percent among women in March.

The data showed the labor force participation rate rose to 54.2 percent in March, while a seasonally adjusted measure of labor underutilization fell 0.4 percentage points to 24.1 percent.

Unemployment was 8.5 percent in October 2023, the lowest in a decade.

The lowest unemployment rate in the past decade was in 2013, when it stood at 8.9 percent, while the highest rate was in 2019 at 13.7 percent.

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.