Unemployment and Employment Outlook
2021 4th Quarter
- In the 4th quarter of 2021, the number of broadly defined unemployed exceeded 8 million.
- Only 20 million of the 64 million citizens of working age are in formal and full-time employment.
- Only 17 out of 100 women are registered and in full-time employment!
- The broad definition of youth unemployment rate is 41.4 percent!
- The broad definition of unemployment among young women has exceeded 51 percent!
The Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS) of the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK) for the 4th quarter of 2021 was published on February 15, 2022. The fourth quarter of 2021 covers the months of October, November and December and is based on the new methodology of TURKSTAT. As it is known, TurkStat has been announcing monthly and quarterly data separately since March 2021. Quarterly data has broader scope, while monthly data is more limited.
TurkStat announced that there was an increase of 2 million 854 thousand people in seasonally adjusted employment in the one-year period between the 4th quarter of 2020 and the 4th quarter of 2021. Thus, the number of seasonally adjusted employment was announced as 29 million 927 thousand in the 4th quarter of 2021. The seasonally adjusted employment rate, which was 42.9 percent in the 4th quarter of 2021, increased by 3.8 percentage points to 46.7 percent. However, the official employment data of TURKSTAT, like the narrow-defined unemployment data, show only a limited part of the picture. Employment data alone do not provide information on the nature of employment. Therefore, alternative employment calculations are also needed!
While the official employment rate of TURKSTAT was announced as 46.5 percent in the 4th quarter of 2021, the Registered Full-Time Employment (KATI) rate calculated by DİSK-AR based on the data of TURKSTAT was 31.9%. While the official employment rate for women was announced as 29.2 percent, the KATI rate was 17.5 percent and the official employment rate for men was 64.2 percent, while the KATI rate was calculated as 46.5 percent.