Turkey took a modest step forward in tackling the country’s decade-long problem of unemployment in the month of July, a government study of labor statistics suggested on Monday.
The Turkish Board of Statistics (TurkStat) report set July unemployment at 8.4 percent, a 0.7 percent improvement from the 9.1 percent unemployment in July of last year.That increase meant that roughly 545,000 more Turks went to work in June 2012 over the previous year, a result that government officials hailed as a sign that Turkey is maintaining economic momentum amid a global financial crisis.
In a Monday announcement to the press, Economy Minister Zafer Çağlayan touted the findings by offering a comparison to the gloomy employment outlook in the eurozone, where the EU statistics agency Eurostat recently set unemployment at 11.4 percent. “The Turkish economy is strong and prime for growth,” he was quoted by the Anatolia news agency as saying. “Employment was approximately 25.5 million in July, a number we’ve never reached before.” The minister also pointed out that the findings put employment numbers within the window of the state’s medium-term program (OVP), which aimed to keep unemployment under 9 percent in 2012. “We’ve easily met this target,” Ministry of Labor and Social Security Faruk Çelik told Anatolia on Monday.
The July employment data nevertheless suggest that the slowdown abroad has made inroads at home, with the July numbers registering a 0.4 percent increasing in unemployment from a month ago. The newest findings also suggest that when employment in the country’s labor intensive agricultural sector — which makes up 8.4 percent of Turkish GDP but around 26 percent of jobs in Turkey — is factored out, July unemployment registers at a eurozone-comparable 11.4 percent, a number that rose from 11.2 percent in the month before.
The numbers are still some of the lowest in a decade, however, approaching the 8.2 percent unemployment Turkey saw in May 2001, when a banking crisis tanked the Turkish economy and led to a near decade of 10 percent or above unemployment.
Unemployment in urban areas decreased year-on-year from 11.5 percent to 10.4, while unemployment in rural areas fell from 4.7 percent to 4.5. Another critical figure, youth unemployment, fell from 18.3 percent in July of last year to 16.3 percent in 2012. The report also showed that the year-on-year percentage of the population in the work force declined by 0.4 percent to 50.8 percent. The percentage of men participating in the workforce declined by 1 percent to 71.9 percent, while the percentage or women working held steady at just 30.3 percent. TurkStat also suggested in its findings that the total number of unregistered, who do not collect social security, was reduced by 3.2 percent year-on-year to an estimated 40.2 of the Turkish workforce
Employment data also suggested that the last year has seen strong growth in non-agricultural employment, with a 67,000-strong drop in the agriculture workforce offset by 612,000 new jobs in industry, construction and services.
Economy Minister Çağlayan said on Monday that much of the growth could be attributed to growth in the country’s export-oriented industrial sector, saying in comments carried by the Anatolia news agency that strong exports were linked with “a subsequent improvement in employment … despite the troubles seen in many nations around the world.” TurkStat said in September Turkey had succeeded in boosting exports by 12.8 percent in the first 8 months of 2012 versus the same period last year.
That growth will be welcome in Ankara, which has in recent months declared that it plans to make Turkey a top 10 economy by 2023, the country’s centennial. Part of that plan is to reduce unemployment to around 5 percent. The government has also stepped up vocational training in recent years with the aim to provide education to around 400,000 unskilled laborers every year. The government also aims to reduce the country’s sizable unregistered economy from 40 percent of GDP to 15 percent.
(Today’s Zaman)
