Türkiye's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate declined to 7.8% in August from 8.1% in July, according to labor force data from the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) reported on September 30.
The number of unemployed people fell by 106,000 to 2.74 million, while employment grew by 136,000 to 32.51 million. The employment rate, which measures the share of the working-age population in work, edged up to 48.4% from 48.3%.
Youth and women still lag
The headline improvement was broad-based, but sharp gaps remain. Unemployment stood at 6.6% for men and 10.1% for women. Among young people aged 15 to 24, the jobless rate fell to 13.0% from 14.1%, although it was 19.4% for young women compared with 9.7% for young men.
The labor force participation rate was unchanged at 52.5%, and the labor force grew by 29,000 to 35.25 million people. Average actual weekly working hours were 42.5 in July, up half an hour from the previous month, according to the same release.
Low participation, particularly among women, is a long-standing feature of the Turkish labor market. Treasury and Finance Minister Mehmet Şimşek has said reforms are planned to bring more women into the workforce, noting that the country's working-age population will keep expanding over the next decade.
Data against a slowing backdrop
The August reading comes as other indicators point to softer activity. The government's new Medium-Term Program, published in September, cut its 2026 growth forecast to 3.3% from 3.8%, and industrial production fell 1.9% year on year in August.
Economists generally view Türkiye's headline jobless rate with some caution, because broader measures of labor underutilization, which include discouraged workers and the underemployed, tend to run far higher. Still, the August figures show the labor market holding up despite tight monetary policy, with the central bank keeping its policy rate high to bring inflation down from the peaks reached in 2024.
TurkStat publishes its monthly labor force statistics roughly two months after the reference period.
Sources
- Turkish Jobless Rate Falls to 7.8% in August
- Türkiye prioritizes macro-financial stability amid global headwinds
Photo: Derrick Brutel / CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
