A report drafted by Turkey’s main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) has revealed that the number of unemployed university graduates in Turkey has risen to 1.3 million from 97,545 over the past 15 years and 26 out of every 100 university graduates are jobless, the Cumhuriyet daily reported.
The report, prepared by Deniz Demir, chief advisor to CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, is titled “The Youth Report: Jobless, Hopeless and Without a Future.”
“Out of every 100 university graduates, 26 of them are jobless. This number will rise further with population increases, the growing number of university graduates and the narrowing of job opportunities,” said the report.
Over the past 15 years, unemployment among high school graduates has fallen from 47 to 25 percent.
“These data reveal the fact that a university education postpones a person’s unemployment,” said the report.
According to the report there are 20 million people in Turkey aged 15-29, of whom 5.5 million are students, while 2.5 million both work and study, while 6 million neither go to school nor work.
The 6 million young people who are neither students nor workers are described as the “missing generation” in the report.
The unemployment rate among 15-24-year-olds in Turkey reached a record 27.1 percent, rising 7.2 percentage points year-on-year in July, according to an October announcement by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat).
The number of unemployed jumped to 4.59 million, a 1.06 million increase year-on-year. “While [the] youth unemployment rate including those aged 15-24 was 27.1% with a 7.2 percentage point rise, the unemployment rate for those aged 15-64 was 14.2% with a 3.2 percentage point rise,” TurkStat said.