According to data released by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) yesterday, unemployment in November 2009 reached 13.1 percent, up 0.1 percentage points from the figure in October. A 0.4 percentage point drop was realized from September to October, signaling that unemployment has yet to fully recover and is stagnating at around 13 percent.
Non-agricultural unemployment showed an improvement in November, decreasing from 16.4 percent in October to 16.2 percent in November. According to a research note issued by the Bahçeşehir University Center for Economic and Social Research (BETAM), on a seasonally adjusted basis non-agricultural unemployment dropped by a meager 0.1 percentage points, from 17.8 percent to 17.7 percent, and witnessed an increase in employment by 39,000 people.
The number of unemployed decreased by a mere 30,000 from October to November, resulting in mixed signals for this vital macroeconomic figure that is worrying politicians globally and represents a human aspect to an economic recovery from the global financial crisis. The jobless rate was 13.1 percent in November |
The number of unemployed decreased by a mere 30,000 from October to November, resulting in mixed signals for this vital macroeconomic figure that is worrying politicians globally and represents a human aspect to an economic recovery from the global financial crisis. The number of unemployed reached 3.27 million in November.
The unemployment rate for young people between the ages of 15 and 24, who make up 18 percent of the population of Turkey, was a higher 24.4 percent in November, up 0.4 percentage points from the figure in October. In a sign expected to create worry for the government, the number of people in the labor force -- those employed or actively looking for work -- decreased in November by approximately 308,000 over October to bring the figure to just above 25 million. Ninety percent of this decrease was due to a shrinking of the number of people employed -- nearly 278,000. This, without an offsetting large decrease in unemployment meant that many of those looking for work between October and November stopped looking and dropped out of the labor force.
The urban unemployment rate realized a small decrease from 15.5 percent in October to 15.3 percent in November, with a similar increase in rural unemployment from 8.2 to 8.5 percent. Thus, the increasingly city-based economy of Turkey is continuing to entice families to pack up and follow the paved route of urbanization.
The distribution of employment among sectors in November also showed signs favorable to workers in the agricultural and construction sectors. According to the data, 24.6 percent of employment was in the agricultural sector, up 1.1 percentage points from November 2008, and the construction sector’s share of employment increased by a modest 0.3 points to reach 6.2 percent. The service and industry sectors saw their shares shrink by 0.4 and 0.9 percentage points to reach 49.5 and 19.8 percent, respectively.
