Turkey’s unemployment rate rose to 20.3 percent, with some 7.5 million people on record, Cumhuriyet newspaper reported on Thursday, citing a study by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK).
DİSK uses datasets published by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) in its studies, however, the study significantly contradicts the unemployment figures TÜİK announced itself. The institute found 3.48 million people to be unemployed in September 2022, less than half the figure DİSK reported.
According to the DİSK study, broad unemployment has surpassed pre-COVID-19 pandemic levels. The TÜİK announced a 560,000 person drop in unemployment in the past year, while the Employment Agency (İŞKUR) recorded some 148,000 more people as unemployed.
Broad unemployment among women was 27.6 percent according to DİSK, more than doubling TÜİK’s 12.8 percent.
The stricter definition of unemployment only includes persons of working age who are actively seeking jobs, while broad unemployment also includes those who simply could be working but were not at the time of record. The gap between broad and strict unemployment has been growing, DİSK found, due to job seekers giving up after a while and dropping off from unemployment statistics.