UPDATE - Turkey's unemployment rate down to 13.2% in 2020

UPDATES WITH MORE DETAILS, EDITS THROUGHOUT

By Gokhan Ergocun

ISTANBUL (AA) - Turkey's unemployment rate dropped by 0.5 percentage points to 13.2% in 2020, the country’s statistical authority revealed on Monday.

The number of unemployed people -- aged 15 and over -- was 4.06 million last year, down from 4.4 million in 2019, the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) data showed.

The number of employed people -- aged 15 years old and over -- was 26.8 million, thus employment rate was 42.8% in 2020, down 2.9 percentage points.

Non-agricultural unemployment rate also dropped to 15.3% in 2020, falling by 0.7 percentage points.

Unemployment rate was 25.3% for the 15-24 age group -- also known as the youth unemployment.

"Unemployment rate for the 15-64 age group realized as 13.4% with 0.6 percentage point decrease and non-agricultural unemployment rate was realized as 15.4% with 0.7 percentage point decrease," TurkStat said.

The institute highlighted that the country's labor force realized as 30.87 million people, down by 1.67 million year-on-year in 2020, posting a 49.3% labor force participation rate.

Last year, 56.2% of total employment was in services sector, followed by industry with 20.5%, agriculture with 17.6%, and construction with 5.7%.