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According to figures released on Tuesday by the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat), unemployment, excluding the agriculture sector, was 14.8 percent. The drop in unemployment represents a 1.3 million increase in the number of people employed in 2010 over the previous year, as the number of gainfully employed people in Turkey reached 22.5 million in 2010.
The figures may look encouraging; however, the country’s unemployment rate is still well above the desired level. The government earlier said it expected the rate of unemployment to fall below the 10 percent benchmark by the end of 2011. Studies seeking new incentives are under way, and observers have argued that the steady growth in the Turkish economy would be a driving force behind Turkey’s employment in the months to come. The current optimistic outlook, however, does not necessarily indicate a solution to the issue in the long run.
Some 3.04 million unemployed people were recorded in 2010, a drop of 425,000 from the previous year. The non-institutional population logged an increase of 801,000 in the given 12 months to reach 71.34 million, while the non-institutional population of working age people (15 or older) rose by 855,000 to 52.54 million, the TurkStat numbers show.
The labor force participation rate, therefore, edged up by 0.9 points to 48.8 percent in 2010 compared to the previous year. In terms of gender, the participation rate recorded an increase of 0.3 points to 70.8 percent for men, and an increase of 1.6 points to 27.6 percent for women.
In terms of sector-specific distribution, agriculture employed 25.2 percent of total new hires in 2010, industry 19.9 percent, construction 6.3 percent and services 48.6 percent. Accordingly, the number of workers in the agriculture sector registered an increase of 0.6 percent in 2010 over 2009, while industry enjoyed a 0.7 percent rise and construction 0.2 percent in the same period. Employment in services sustained a 1.5 percent drop last year over 2009.
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