ANKARA (AA) – Unemployment rose 1.2 percentage points in August year-on-year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced Tuesday.
The number of unemployed persons age 15 and over rose to 3.49 million in August 2016, an increase of 435,000 from August 2015, pushing the unemployment rate to 11.3 percent, according to the institute.
Unemployment also saw a 0.6 percentage point jump from the previous month.
The report showed unemployment rose for the fourth month in a row in August after falling to 9.3 percent in April.
July’s employment rate was 46.7 percent, down 0.1 percent from the same period last year, despite the Turkish economy adding 323,000 jobs – an indication that growth in the number of people seeking a job has outpaced job creation.
Turkey’s labor force participation rate surged 0.5 percentage points in August year-on-year to 52.6 percent, with the number of people in the labor force totaling 30.96 million, a rise of 759,000 in 2016 compared with the same period the previous year.
The number of women participating in the workforce rose 1 percentage point from the previous year to 33.1 percent, the report showed. The same rate was unchanged for men, suggesting overall growth of the labor force participation rate was driven by women.