Turkey: Unemployment rate at 13% in April

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's unemployment rate stood at 13.0% in April this year, the country's statistical authority announced Tuesday.

TurkStat said the unemployment rate rose by 3.3 percentage points on a yearly basis.

Official figures revealed that the number of unemployed people aged 15 and older surged 1.1 million year-on-year to 4.2 million as of April.

"In the same period, [the] non-agricultural unemployment rate occurred as 15.0% with [a] 3.6 percentage point increase.

"While [the] youth unemployment rate including persons aged 15-24 was 23.2% with [a] 6.3 percentage point increase, the unemployment rate for persons aged 15-64 occurred as 13.3% with [a] 3.5 percentage point increase," the institute said.

In March, the country's unemployment rate stood at 14.1%, with 4.54 million unemployed people aged 15 and above.