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Unemployment rate sees decrease in May
The unemployment rate was 14.9 percent in April. The unemployment rate in May represented a 4.4 percent increase over the same month in 2008, when unemployment stood at 9.2 percent.
The latest Household Labor Survey, released on Monday by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat), showed that unemployment in urban areas was 16.5 percent in May, while it was 7.8 percent in rural areas. The labor force participation rate (LFPR) stood at 48.2 percent in the same month. The number of unemployed people in Turkey grew to 3.38 million.
Between May 2008 and May 2009, Turkey's total non-institutional population (i.e., excluding students, prisoners and those serving in the military) increased by 818,000 to 70.4 million; in this group, the number of those who are of working age increased by 875,000 to 51.57 million.
When assessing the active labor force and the unemployment rate, TurkStat does not count those who are not actively seeking work, thereby approximately halving the number of those counted in the statistics. During the same period, the number of employed individuals declined by 387,000 to 21.45 million.
In the same period, the number of workers employed in the agricultural sector increased by 69,000, while those employed in the nonagricultural sector decreased by 455,000.
Of the population working in May, 25.3 percent were employed in agriculture, 18.6 percent in industry, 6 percent in construction and 50.1 percent in the service sector. The figures show a 0.8 percentage point increase in agricultural sector workers and a 1.2 point increase in service workers during the 12 months prior to May, while industrial labor decreased by 1.8 points and construction workers dropped by 0.2 points.
TurkStat records also indicated that the share of unregistered workers whose social security contributions are not paid by employers in the total labor force increased by 0.6 percentage points to 44.6 percent in May compared to the same month in 2008. The percentage of unregistered agricultural workers decreased from 88.4 percent to 86.6 percent over the same period, and those in the nonagricultural sector decreased from 30.4 percent to 28.6 percent.
The LFPR climbed by 0.8 percentage points during the year prior to May, to 48.2 percent. In May, the LFPR for men was 70.5 percent, a 0.1 percentage point increase over a year before, and the LFPR figure for women was 26.6 percent, a 1.3 percentage point rise. The urban LFPR was 45.8 percent, an increase of 0.8 percent over 2008, and the rural LFPR increased by 0.3 percent to 53.6 percent. In the period between May 2008 and May 2009, 1.82 million people either began working or changed jobs.
Meanwhile, the Bahçeşehir University Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM) said in a note that the seasonally adjusted numbers still indicate a drop in employment.
Prepared by Professor Dr. Seyfettin Gürsel and research assistant Onur Altındağ, the report pointed out that non-agricultural unemployment was down from 18.2 percent in April to 17 percent in May.
“While the number of jobless persons in non-agricultural sectors was down by 217,000, the number of those who were involved in non-agricultural sectors rose by 300,000 in the same period. However, this increase in non-agricultural employment is heavily due to seasonal factors,” the report said.
The report underlined that the data, when it exclude the effects of seasonal factors from statistical calculations, show that the decrease in the employment rate still continues. Accordingly, non-agricultural employment decreased in May compared to April by 15,600 people, it explained. “All in all, it is still early to be optimistic by only evaluating the TurkStat figures. Still, it is perceived that the fall in employment numbers has decelerated.”
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