UPDATE - Turkey: Unemployment rate down in September

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By Yunus Girgin

ANKARA (AA) – Turkey's unemployment rate was 12.7% in September, showing a decrease of 1.1 percentage points year-on-year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) announced on Thursday.

In August, the country’s unemployment rate was 13.2%.

The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over decreased by 550,000 to just over 4 million as of September compared to the same month last year, according to latest figures.

The youth unemployment rate in the 15-24 age group fell to 24.3% with a decrease of 1.8 percentage points.

The non-agricultural unemployment rate declined by 1.5 percentage points to 14.9% year-on-year during the same month.

Meanwhile, the employment rate stood at 44.1% with a fall of 2 percentage points annually.

The distribution of employment by sector was 55.3% in the services sector, 19.9% in industry, 18.5% in agriculture, and 6.3% in construction, according to TurkStat data.

The labor force participation rate went down by 3 percentage points year-on-year to 50.5%.

Turkey's labor force decreased by 1.28 million year-on-year to 31.72 million as of September.

The labor force participation rate for men dropped by 3.1 percentage points to 69.5%, while it stood at 31.9% for women after an annual decline of 3 percentage points.

The rate of unregistered employment – people working without social security related to their principal occupation – was 32.2% in September, down by 3.8 percentage points on a yearly basis.

As laid out in its economic plan, the Turkish government’s unemployment rate target for 2020 is 13.8%, with the figure projected to drop to 10.9% by 2023.