Azernews.Az

By Kamila Aliyeva

Turkey must fight unemployment, which is one of the main problems in the country, Turkish Prime Minister Binali Yildirim said.

Yildirim noted that during the last five months over one million jobs were created in Turkey, which contributed to a significant reduction in the unemployment rate.

"To reduce the unemployment rate, we need to attract additional investments to Turkey," Yildirim said.

The jobless rate in Turkey increased to 12.6 percent in February of 2017, up from 10.9 percent a year earlier. Non-farm unemployment went up to 14.8 percent from 12.7 percent and youth unemployment rose to 23.3 percent from 18.6 percent.

In February, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan launched ‘employment mobilization’ campaign to improve the falling employment rates. Moreover, the recruitment in public sector throughout the year is also expected to contribute to the increase in employment rate, which promises a positive outlook for the upcoming period.

The Turkish Statistics Institute (TUİK) reported that in 2016, unemployment in Turkey was at the level of 10.6 percent, which is 0.6 percent more than in 2015.

In 2016 in Turkey, the number of unemployed reached 3.33 million people. According to official data of TUİK the unemployment rate amounts to 18.7 in the south-eastern provinces of Turkey.

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Kamila Aliyeva is AzerNews’ staff journalist, follow her on Twitter: @Kami_Aliyeva

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