UPDATE - Turkey's unemployment rate slightly down in April

By Tuba Sahin

ANKARA (AA) – The unemployment rate in Turkey slipped to 12.8% in April, the country's statistical authority announced Friday.

The figure was down 0.2 percentage points from the same month last year, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said.

April's unemployment rate was also down from 13.2% a month earlier.

The number of unemployed people aged 15 and over hit 3.8 million in April, decreasing 427,000 on an annual basis.

Non-agricultural unemployment declined by 0.1 percentage points to 14.9% in the same period.

Official data showed that the youth unemployment rate, including people aged 15 to 24, rose 1.2 percentage points year-on-year, hitting 24.4% in April.

The rate of young people who were neither employed nor in education reached 29.1%, up 5.7 percentage points from the same period last year.

The employment rate also fell 4.9 percentage points to 41.1% during the same period.

The number of employed people dropped by 2.6 million on an annual basis to 25.6 million people this April.

TurkStat data revealed that the labor force participation rate was 47.2% in April 2020, down 5.7 percentage points from April 2019.

The number of women participating in the workforce dropped 5.3 percentage points from last year to 29.2%.

Under its economic program, the Turkish government targets an unemployment rate for this year of 11.8%. The program projects unemployment will drop gradually to hit 9.8% in 2022.