Turkey's Unemployment At Single Digit After 9 Months

- Turkey's unemployment rate stood at 9.6 percent in April period, falling to single digit level after 9 months, as tourism sector starts to employ seasonal employees, according to the data released by Turkstat on Wednesday.

Employment in services increased by 1.2 percentage point, driven by tourism sector, while employment at agriculture fell by 0.6 percentage point, at industry by 0.5 percentage point and at construction by 0.1 percentage point compared to the same period of the previous year.

Non-agricultural unemployment rate fell to 11.6 percent in the same period, 0.8 percentage point higher than a year before and 1.0 percentage point lower than the previous month.

Youth unemployment rate including 15-24 age group realized as 17 percent with 1.5 percentage point increase, unemployment rate for 15-64 age group occured as 9.8 percent with 0.7 percentage point increase, against in the same period of last year.

Number of unemployed persons aged 15 years old and over has realized as 2 million 821 thousand persons with 242 thousand persons increased in the period of April 2015 in Turkey compared to the same period of the previous year.

Agricultural employment decreased as 67 thousand persons and non-agricultural employment increased as 511 thousand persons in this period.

Of those who were employed in this period; 20.7 percent was employed in agriculture, 20 percent was employed in industry, 7.2 percent was employed in construction and 52.1 percent was employed in services.

Labour force participation rate rose to 51.1 percent with 0.4 percentage point increase, 71.2 percent for male and and 31.4 percent for female.