Real unemployment is rising at a rapid pace

Economic Service

While records in real unemployment come one after another every month, this time a historical record came in April data. In April, when 13 million people were determined to be unemployed, the broadly defined unemployment rate broke the record of the last 136 months.

According to the results of the April 2025 Household Labor Force Survey announced by the Turkish Statistical Institute (TÜİK); the number of unemployed people aged 15 and over increased by 203 thousand people in April 2025 compared to the previous month, reaching 3 million 63 thousand people with 8.6 percent. The peak of the last 6 months was seen in narrowly defined unemployment, which covers a narrow group of people considered unemployed by TÜİK.

UNSEEN SUMMIT

A historical peak was seen in broadly defined unemployment, which expresses the rate of real unemployed people not counted as unemployed by TÜİK. The idle labor force rate, which consists of time-related underemployment , potential labor force and unemployed, increased by 3.4 points compared to the previous month in April 2025 and became 32.2 percent. Thus, the idle labor force, which was 25.4 percent in the same period last year, increased by 6.8 points in 1 year.

According to the calculations of DİSK Research Center (DİSK-AR), the monthly increase in real unemployment, which peaked in April, was exactly 1.2 million people. In the last year, 2.2 million people joined the real unemployed.

40% OF WOMEN ARE UNEMPLOYED

The narrowly defined unemployment rate was estimated to be 7.1 percent for men and 11.5 percent for women. Again, the highest rate among unemployment groups was real female unemployment.

Broadly defined, female unemployment has reached an alarming level of 40 percent. Unemployment rates among young women have also been striking. The unemployment rate among young people aged 15-24 increased by 0.4 points compared to the previous month, reaching 15.7 percent. The unemployment rate for men in this age group was estimated at 11.2 percent and for women at 23.7 percent.