Turkey's unemployment rate drops to 13.2% in March - TurkStat

Unemployment in Turkey dropped to 13.2% in March, down 0.9 percentage point compared to the same month last year, the country's statistical authority announced Wednesday.

The Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) said the number of unemployed persons age 15 and over slipped 573,000 year-on-year to 3.97 million in the month.

March's figure was also down from 13.6% this February.

Official data also showed that non-agricultural unemployment fell 1.1 percentage points to 15% during the same period.

The youth unemployment rate, including people age 15-24, was 24.6%, down 0.6 percentage point on a yearly basis in March.

The rate of young people who were neither employed nor in education was 27.9%, up 4.2 percentage points from the same period last year, TurkStat said.

The employment rate also fell 3.4 percentage points year-on-year to 42% this March, said the data.

"The number of employed persons decreased by 1.66 million to 26.1 million persons in March 2020 compared with the same period of last year," it said.

The labor force participation rate was 48.4% in March, down 4.5 percentage points on an annual basis.

The report said the number of women participating in the workforce dropped 4.3 percentage points from last year to 30.1%.

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.

Turkey in mid-April banned lay-offs for three months to help mitigate the adverse impacts of the pandemic on the labour market. The government promised to support workers forced to take unpaid leave and bail out companies.

Late on Tuesday, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan announced incentives for mainly export-driven industries to boost employment.