UPDATE - Turkey's unemployment rate at 12.9% in May

UPDATED WITH MORE FIGURES

By Aysu Bicer

ANKARA (AA) - Unemployment in Turkey stood at 12.9% in May, the country's statistical authority announced Monday.

The figure was up 0.1 percentage points from the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

May's non-agricultural unemployment rate was 15.2% with 0.2 percentage point increase.

Meanwhile, employment rate fell 4.7 percentage points to 41.4%.

The number of employed people dropped by 2.4 million to 25.6 million in May on an annual basis.

The rate of young people who were neither employed nor in education reached 29.1%, up 5.1 percentage points from last year's May rate of 24%.

TurkStat data revealed that the labor force participation rate was 47.6% during the month, down 5.3 percentage points from 52.9% in May 2019.

The number of women participating in the workforce dropped by 5.1 percentage points from last year to 33.7%.

Meanwhile, the total number of people employed in the public sector was 4.8 million, with a 4.3% percentage point increase in the second quarter compared to the same period last year.

Under its economic program, the Turkish government targets an unemployment rate for this year of 11.8%.

The program projects a gradual unemployment drop to 9.8% in 2022.