UPDATE - Turkey: Unemployment rate at 13% in April

UPDATES WITH MORE DETAILS

By Muhammed Ali Gurtas

ANKARA (AA) - Turkey's unemployment rate stood at 13% in April this year, the country's statistical authority announced Tuesday.

TurkStat said the unemployment rate rose by 3.3 percentage points on a yearly basis.

Official figures revealed that the number of unemployed people aged 15 or older surged 1.1 million year-on-year to 4.2 million as of April.

"In the same period, [the] non-agricultural unemployment rate occurred as 15% with [a] 3.6 percentage point increase.

"While [the] youth unemployment rate including persons aged 15-24 was 23.2% with [a] 6.3 percentage point increase, the unemployment rate for persons aged 15-64 occurred as 13.3% with [a] 3.5 percentage point increase," the institute said.

In March, the country's unemployment rate stood at 14.1%, with 4.54 million unemployed people aged 15 or above.

The number of employed people in Turkey amounted to 28.2 million, with an annual down of 810,000.

"The employment rate occurred as 46% with [a] 1.9 percentage point decrease," TurkStat said.

"According to the distribution of employment by sector; 17.6% was employed in agriculture, 19.7% was in industry, 5.7% was in construction and 56.9% was in services," it added.

The institute said that Turkey's labor force climbed 306,000 year-on-year to 32.4 million people as of April.

The country's labor force participation rate was 52.9% in the same month, 71.8% for men and 34.5% for women.

The rate of unregistered employment -- people working without social security related to their principal occupation -- was 34.2% in April, going up 0.9 percentage points on a yearly basis.

Last year, Turkey's unemployment rate hovered between 9.6% and 13.5%.

Since 2014, the highest figures were seen in January and February this year with 14.7%, while the lowest was in May 2014 with 8.8%.

TurkStat will release its next report on the subject on Aug. 15.