Announcing the monthly unemployment figures in a statement, the official statistics bureau said the January unemployment rate was 10.2 percent. That was, however, lower than the 11.9 percent observed the same month a year earlier.
The proportion of unemployed in urban areas decreased year-on-year from 13.8 percent in January 2011 to 12 percent three months ago. The unemployment rate in rural areas, likewise, declined to 6.5 percent in January of this year against 8.1 percent in the first month of last year.
According to the latest available figures announced on Monday, there were 2.66 million unemployed within Turkey's labor force of more than 26 million people in January. The number of unemployed was 3 million in the same month of 2011.
At the height of the global financial crisis in 2009 when the Turkish economy contracted by nearly 5 percent, unemployment exceeded 15 percent in the country of more than 70 million people -- nearly half of whom are also in its vast labor force. The labor market outlook, however, has grown brighter as the Turkish economy showed a speedy recovery from the immediate impact of the turmoil, posting 8.9 percent growth in 2010 and 8.5 percent last year.
TurkStat's statement also provided insights into the structure of employment in the country. It said 71.5 percent of those employed in January were men, and 43 percent of them had at least a high school diploma. Fifty-seven percent of them worked at enterprises that employed 10 or less people. And whereas 2.6 percent of them had another job, 2.1 percent of them were looking to change jobs or find an extra job to supplement their income.
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Source : todayszaman.com
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