DECREASE IN NONAGRICULTURAL UNEMPLOYMENT
Seyfettin Gürsel, Gökçe Uysal and Melike Kökkızıl
Seasonally adjusted labor market data shows that, compared to the previous period, nonagricultural unemployment rate increased from 12.3 percent to 12.1 percent (0.2 percentage points) in the period of January 2015. Betam’s forecasting model had predicted a 0.1 percent decrease for this period. We expect that the nonagricultural unemployment will continue to decline in the period of February 2016. A 95 thousand-employment increase in the services sector drives the decrease in nonagricultural unemployment. Employment declined in manufacturing by 11 thousand. The data released by Turkstat indicates that increases in female labor force and female employment are stronger relative to those of males in the period of January 2016 compared to the same period in the previous year. The increase in the number of females who are unemployed in nonagricultural sectors results from a faster increase in labor force than that in employment. For males, the increase in labor force was faster than that in employment, thus the number of males who were unemployed decreased in non-agricultural sectors.