Turkish Statistical Institute (TUIK), a Turkish government agency, has announced labour force statistics for the first quarter of the year. Accordingly, the number of unemployed people aged 15 and over across Turkey, became 4,118,000 thousand people with an increase of 142,000 people compared to the previous quarter and the unemployment rate reached 12.9% with a 0.1 point increase.
The Youth unemployment rate is 25.3% in the first quarter of 2021, with an increase of 0.2 points compared to the previous quarter and 29.3% of the number of unemployed is long-term unemployed.
While the official government agency, TUIK announced the unemployment figures in this way, the Research Institute of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK-AR) stated that the broadly defined unemployment reached 10 million in the first quarter of 2021. The increase compared to the first quarter of last year was 2.5 million people and broad unemployment became 27.8% in the first quarter.
Unemployment continues to develop as one of the most important problems in Turkey in recent years. According to the data of TUIK in Turkey, 51% of the employed youth took part in the service sector in 2020. During the pandemic, the proportion of young people between the ages of 15-24, who were neither in education nor employment, increased by 2.3 points compared to 2019, reaching 28.3%.
Again according to 2020 data, 17% of the youth between the ages of 15-19 in Turkey; 33.3% of the youth between the ages of 19-24 were neither in employment nor in education. Today, according to TUIK data, more than 1 million university graduates are unemployed in Turkey.
