Unemployment rises according to Employment Agency, TurkStat says the opposite

* Photo: Çanakkale Gündem Newspaper

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The Research Center of the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DİSK-AR) released a report shortly after the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), producing official statistics on Turkey, shared its "Labor Force Statistics" for September 2021.

The DİSK-AR report draws attention to the difference between the TurkStat data and the data of the Employment Agency (İŞKUR).

As recalled by the DİSK-AR, according to the statistics shared by the TurkStat yesterday (November 10), the unemployment rate was 11.5 percent with a 0.3-point decrease while the broad unemployment rate, or "idle labor force," rose by 0.2 points to 21.9 percent in September.

The number of unemployed people in Turkey dropped by 70,000 in a month to 3,79 million in September, as the DİSK-AR has referred to the TurkStat figures further. As for the number of broad unemployment, it was announced as 3 million 794 thousand people by the TurkStat.

Commenting on these numbers, the DİSK-AR says:

There is a gap between the TurkStat's and İŞKUR's numbers of unemployed people. One of the most important criteria used by the TurkStat to consider people to be unemployed is that people use one of the active channels for job seeking. The İŞKUR is the most frequently used channel for job seeking. However, while the number of unemployed people registered in İŞKUR has been increasing, the TurkStat has announced that the number of unemployed has dropped.

Elaborating further on this gap, the Research Center notes: "According to İŞKUR, the number of registered unemployed people increased by 219 thousand in September 2021 in a year; however, the TurkStat data says that it decreased by 160 thousand people. The annual gap between the data of the TurkStat and that of İŞKUR is 379 thousand.

"The data of the İŞKUR is based on records while that of the TurkStat is based on the survey. However, the fact that there is such a huge gap between the two sets of data causes a serious reliability problem."

Women's unemployment near 30 percent

The DİSK-AR report also addresses women's unemployment in Turkey. "Considering the rates of gender-based unemployment, women's unemployment is the highest among all types of unemployment," stresses the DİSK-AR: "The seasonally adjusted narrow unemployment rate is 10 percent among men while this rate is 14.6 percent among women."

Raising concerns that the broadt unemployment rate is 17.8 percent among men while it is 29.7 percent among women, the DİSK-AR stresses that the gap between the two rates is 11.9 percent. (HA/SD)

Click to read the full report (in Turkish)