THE DECREASE IN UNEMPLOYMENT STOPPED IN MARCH
Seyfettin Gürsel and Yazgı Genç
Seasonally adjusted labor market data shows that non-agricultural unemployment rate remained at 11.7 percent in the period of March. The non-agricultural unemployment rate decreased from 13.6 to 11.7 in the last year as a consequence of high GDP growth in 2017. As result, the non-agricultural unemployment rate has decreased by 1.9 percentage points in the recent year. The reason behind this decrease has been the strong increase in non-agricultural employment. This increase continues along with GDP growth; from March 2017 to March 2018, employment increased by 272 thousand in manufacture, 701 thousand in the services and 69 thousand in construction, 1 million 42 thousand in total. Betam’s forecasting model predicts that the non-agricultural unemployment will remain at 11.7 percent in the period of April 2018.