Broad unemployment in Turkey: 9.7 million people

* Photo: Gökhan Zobar / AA

Click to read the article in Turkish

The Research Center of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK-AR) has released its own "Report on the Unemployment and Employment Outlook" shortly after the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) shared the labor force statistics for May 2021.

Referring to the number of unemployed people announced by the TurkStat (4 million 237 thousand), the DİSK-AR has emphasized that this number is "narrowly defined." According to the DİSK Research Center, the number of broad unemployed has reached 9.7 million in Turkey.

"The grave picture of unemployment is still in place," it has noted.

The DİSK-AR has also noted that the data shared by the TurkStat on a monthly basis has a very limited scope:

The number of people seen in employment, but not on the job during the pandemic is not included in the TurkStat data. Similarly, the number of people not looking for a job, but ready to work and the number of people who have lost hopes for finding a job are not included in the monthly data of the TurkStat, either. This data is shared in its quarterly reports.

CLICK - Unemployment decreased in May despite a two-week lockdown, says TurkStat

3-million increase from 2019 to 2021

When the details of the DİSK-AR report are observed, it is seen that the narrowly defined unemployment rate was 13.2 percent and broad unemployment was 27.2 percent in Turkey in May 2020.

According to the TurkStat data, the seasonally adjusted number of unemployment increased by 254 thousand people in a year to 4 million 237 thousand people in May 2021. The number of narrowly defined unemployed has decreased by 265 thousand people in the last month.

Based on the labor underutilization rate announced by the TurkStat, the DİSK-AR has found that the seasonally adjusted number of broad unemployment was 9 million 671 thousand people in May 2021.

This number was 6 million 388 thousand people in May 2019 and 9 million 976 thousand in May 2020. "Even though there has been a relative drop in the number of broad unemployment when compared to its peak in May 2020, there has still been an increase of 3 million 283 thousand people since May 2019," the DİSK-AR report has commented further.

Women's broad unemployment: 34 percent

While the seasonally adjusted number of narrow unemployment was 4 million 237 thousand, the number of broad unemployment calculated by the DİSK-AR was 9 million 671 thousand in May 2021.

When considered by gender, the broad unemployment rate of men was 23.9 percent in May while it was 33.7 percent for women. In other words, there is a gap of 12.2 percentage points between the unemployment of men and women. While the number of broad unemployment was 5 million 613 thousand among men, it was 4 million 37 thousand among women.

Broad unemployment among young: Over 40 percent

While the TurkStat has announced the youth unemployment rate (for the 15-24 age group) as 24 percent, the DİSK-AR has calculated the broad unemployment rate among the young as 42.4 percent in this period.

According to the TurkStat, while the narrow unemployment rate was 13.2 percent in Turkey in May 2021, the broad unemployment rate was 27.2 percent, which has shown that the gap between the two has increased to 14 percentage points. The Research Center has commented that the main reason for this is that the lay-off ban during the outbreak kept the narrow unemployment at a certain level and decreased the duration of work, which made the narrow unemployment stand at a certain level while the broad unemployment rate skyrocketed. (HA/SD)