One in Three Young Persons Unemployed in Turkey

The Istanbul Chamber of Public and Chartered Accountants (ISMMMO) has published a report entitled "I am young and hard-working, but I am unemployed."

The report notes that there are 12.4 million people aged 15 to 24 in Turkey. Of these, 4.2 are part of the labour force, while 6.2 are still in education.

Another 1.2 million are unemployed and the remaining people have given up looking for work.

Turkey celebrated its Youth and Sport Festival on 19 May, and the 15-24 age group makes up a considerable part of Turkey's population,17.4 percent.

Imbalance in youth populations

If one looks at the size this age group has in different provinces, it becomes obvious that there are more young people in the east and southeast of the country.

Tunceli, the province with the lowest population in general, has the highest percentage of youth. This is followed by Hakkari (25 percent), Şırnak (22.8 percent), Bingöl (22.3 percent) and Siirt (21.6 percent).

Western provinces are much further down in the list.

In industrial cities like Istanbul, Ankara, Kocaeli, Bursa and Antalya, the percentage of young people is even below the national average.

39 cities have a young population above the national average, while 42 cities are below the average.

It emerges that most of the young people live in central Anatolia, and the east and southeast of the country, where agriculture is still a very important source of income.

Youth unemployment on the rise

According to data from the Turkey Statistical Institute (TÜİK), Turkey had a population of 71 million 517 thousand 100 peope at the end of 2008, with 12 million 441 thousand 612 young people.

Of the 2 million 567 thousand unemployed in Turkey, around 828,000 are young people with or without qualifications.

After September 2008, the effects of the global economic crisis have made themselves felt in Turkey. The labour force shrank from 24,948,000 in August 2008 to 24,761,000 in September 2008.

While the high rate of unemployed rose even more from 9.8 percent to 10.3 percent, the rate of unemployed among the young rose from 19.1 percent to 20.1 percent. The number of unemployed young people rose from 862,000 to 885,000 from August to September.

In October, this number rose to 942,000, and in November, there were over one million young people unemployed. By February 2009, there were 1.2 million unemployed young people among the official number of 3.8 million unemployed in Turkey. (EZÖ/AG)