Unemployment rises to 11.3 percent, informal labor down 4.5 points
Posted by meb at April 16th, 2008
The unemployment rate in Turkey has worsened, with growth slowing significantly and global financial turmoil curbing new investment.
The latest Household Labor Survey released by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) yesterday shows that the unemployment rate in the January 2008 period, measured via a three-month rolling average for December, January and February, increased by 0.3 points over the same period last year, to 11.3 percent. The number of jobless people increased by 59,000, reaching 2.57 million. The unemployment rate increased to 13 percent with a 0.1 percentage point increase in urban areas and in rural areas increased to 8.6 percent with a 0.7 percentage point rise.
In the January 2008 period, the non-institutional (excluding state and military) civilian population increased by 767,000 persons and reached 69.3 million, while the non-institutional working age civilian population increased by 750,000 to 49.6 million.
In the same period the number of actively working people decreased by 278,000 compared to the same period of last year, amounting to 20.1 million. Agricultural employment decreased by 527,000 and non-agricultural employment increased by 249,000 persons in this period.
Of the actively working population, 23.2 percent were employed in agriculture, 21.4 percent in industry, 5.1 percent in construction and 50.3 percent were employed in services. Employment in agriculture decreased by 2.3 percentage points while it increased by 1.1 points in industry, by 0.1 points in construction and by 1.2 points in services. Persons who worked without any social security related to their primary employment declined by 4.5 percentage points to 41.9 percent of the total working population. The share of agricultural laborers who did not have any social security decreased from 87.5 percent to 84.9 percent, and in non-agriculture decreased from 32.3 percent to 28.8 percent compared to the same period of the previous year. The labor force participation rate (LFPR) decreased to 45.7 percent with a 1.1 percentage point decrease compared to the same period of last year for Turkey in January 2008 period.
Results published in the January 2008 release pertain to the three-month period including December 2007, January and February 2008. A total of 37,241 sample households, 26,344 of which were from urban areas and 10,897 from rural areas, were used in this term.
TurkStat also said in the statement that the population census results for 2007 were announced on Dec. 31, 2007, and noted that the labor force survey results were weighted according to population projections based on the 1990 and 2000 population censuses. “There is a difference of 3.7 million people between the results of the Address-based Population Registration System [ADNKS] and current population projections. Until the new population projections are ready, the results of the labor force survey will be based on the total population obtained from the ADNKS,” TurkStat said.
source: Today’s Zaman
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