Turkey’s unemployment rate reaches new height

Turkey’s unemployment rate has risen to 13.8%, according to the country’s official auditing agency.

This raises the number of Turkish citizens without work to 4.4 million, the agency said.

It added that this is the largest number of unemployed Turkish nationals to be registered in years.

The new unemployment figure is almost double the figure registered in 2018. This means that the number of unemployed people in Turkey rose by almost 1.9 million in the space of one year.

Some observers attribute the rise in the unemployment rate to what they describe as the “misguided” policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

Turkey’s sacked treasury minister Berat Albayrak, Erdogan’s son-in-law, had promised to reduce the number of the unemployed before he was given his notice.

He said during the last mayoral elections that he would offer jobs to up to 2.5 million. Nonetheless, he ended up firing 789 people.

The rise in the number of those without jobs boils down to the drop in investments and the deterioration of conditions in important economic sectors, such as tourism and agriculture.

A large number of real estate projects have stopped. Unemployment in the agricultural sector rose to 16.5% of the workforce. This is the highest unemployment figure in this sector since 2005.

Erdogan conceded recently that he is no longer capable of creating jobs for university graduates. This contradicts his initial pledges to find jobs for his country’s youth.

Meanwhile, deteriorating economic conditions in Turkey have caused a large number of companies to go bankrupt. The companies going bankrupt included an airline that started operating in 2010.