Broad unemployment in Turkey: 8.4 million people

* Photo: Mezopotamya Agency (MA)

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The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), the state agency responsible for producing official statistics on the country, has documented that the unemployment rate was 12 percent in Turkey in July 2020. Increasing by 1.4 percentage points in a month, this unemployment rate means that 3 million 902 thousand people were unemployed in Turkey in July.

Shortly after the TurkStat shared these figures on Friday (September 10), the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK) also released its "Outlook on Unemployment and Employment."

Underlining that a major increase was observed in unemployment after the layoff ban, which was introduced to curb the effects of the pandemic, was lifted, the DİSK indicated that Turkey's broad unemployment rate was 23.6 percent in July 2021. This rate was 29.6 percent for women.

Turkey ranks third in unemployment in Europe

The DİSK report noted that the number of new unemployed people was 506 thousand in July 2021, which means that Turkey now ranks third in unemployment in Europe after Greece and Spain.

The DİSK is of the opinion that the data shared by the TurkStat on a monthly basis by using a recently introduced methodology has a very limited scope. It argued that "the monthly data does not contain several details which used to be covered by the previous TurkStat methodology."

Explaining this argument, the DİSK said: "For this reason, the number of those who were shown in employment, but were actually not during the pandemic is not included in the TurkStat data.

"Similarly, the number of those who do not look for a job, but are ready to work, the number of unemployed people who have lost hope and details of youth unemployment are not in TurkStat's monthly data. This data is included in the quarterly data announced by the TurkStat." (KÖ/SD)