‘De facto unemployment rate of women is 32 percent in Turkey’

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The Women Entrepreneurs Association of Turkey (KAGİDER) has released a report based on the "Labor Force Statistics" recently announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), Turkey's government agency commissioned with producing official statistics on the country.

Underlining that the effects of the pandemic on women's employment have become more visible this month, the association has noted that women's employment has dropped by 795 thousand people.

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According to the TurkStat bulletin that covers May-June-July 2020, when lay-offs were banned, women's employment was 8 million 312 people. When compared with 9 million 107 women in employment in the same period last year, the figure marks a decrease of 795 thousand people.

KAGİDER has noted that 395 thousand of these women were unpaid family workers, most of whom in the agricultural sector. Of the remaining 436 thousand women, 427 thousand were paid workers or daily wage earners. The association has emphasized that this decrease consists of informally employed women or the ones who resigned from their jobs.

Loss of income: 1 billion lira

According to the calculations of the KAGİDER, the decrease in women's employment has led to an income loss of 1 billion lira in total.

The report of the association has noted that "when compared to the last month, the decrease in women's employment has increased due to the pandemic, which hit a record-high number of 1.1 million in April, when compared to the same period last year."

As indicated by the report, dismissals of women "are not something peculiar to the pandemic period as the last 15 months have witnessed losses over losses in terms of women's employment."

According to the report, "when the loss of 795 thousand during the pandemic is taken together with the loss of 101 thousand people in 2019, the decrease in women's employment in the last year hit 896 thousnd people."

In this context, the report has also addressed the closed businesses: "It is also seen that 131 thousand businesses have been closed over the last year and the number of employers dropped from 1 million 280 thousand people in June 2019 to 1 million 149 thousand people in June 2020."

At this point, the report has noted that while 167 workplaces with male owners were closed, the number of women business owners increased by 36 thousand people and reached 151 thousand women.

3.2 million women work informally

According to the report of the KAGİDER, as of June 2020, there are 3.2 million women who are informally working across Turkey and 2 million of them are working in the agriculture sector:

"Since last year, there has been a decrease of 729 thousand people in informal employment, 375 thousand of whom are in the agricultural sector. These figures are really close to the falls of 795 thousand and 347 thousand witnessed in women's employment and agricultural sector."

De facto unemployment rate: 32 percent

Referring to the TurkStat's Labor Force Statistics for June, the KAGİDER has reminded the public that the Institute announced women's unemployment rate as 14.5 percent. "As of June, there are 1.41 million unemployed women in the country," it has referred to the statistics furter.

"Again, according to the TurkStat's statistics on 'the persons who do not look for a job, but are ready to start working', 2.5 million women are in this state as of June. While 614 thousand of these women are no longer hopeful that they can find a job, the remaining 1.9 million say that they are not looking for a job for a series of reasons such as being housewives, students, retired or not in a state to work, but are ready to start working.

"When 614 thousand people who are not hopeful that they will find a job are added to the labor force statistics released by the TurkStat, it is seen that women's unemployment rate was not 14.5, but 19.5 percent in June.

"When all women who do not look for a job, but say that they are ready to start working are added to this calculation, the unemployment rate of women hits 32 percent. To make matters worse, since 2019, these rates have been increasing at an alarming pace." (HA/SD)