DECREASE IN UNEMPLOYMENT CONTINUES
Seyfettin Gürsel, Gökçe Uysal and Uğurcan Acar
Seasonally adjusted labor market data show that non-agricultural unemployment rate decreased by 0.1 percentage points in the period of January reaching 11.7 percent. The non-agricultural unemployment rate decreased from 14,1 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 2.4 percentage points in the recent year. The reason behind this decrease is the strong increases in non-agricultural employment. From December 2017 to January 2018, employment increased by 29 and 53 thousand in the construction and manufacture sectors while employment decreased by 4 thousand in the services. Betam’s forecasting model predicts that the non-agricultural unemployment will remain constant at 11.7 percent in the period of February 2018.