Seyfettin Gürsel, Yazgı Genç and Mine Durmaz Aslan
The non-agricultural unemployment rate in Turkey remained at 13.0 percent from 2016 to 2017. However, regional labour markets behaved asymmetrically. Out of 26 regions, 11 registered increases in non-agricultural unemployment while in 13 of them decreases are observed and in 2 regions unemployment rate did not change. When regions are compared with their non-agricultural unemployment rates, it is worth noting the significance of the large gap between the region with the lowest rate (6.1 percent) in Trabzon (TR90) and the highest rate (30.1 percent) in Mardin (TRC3).
When a more comprehensive assessment is made by considering labour market dynamics, Mardin region emerges as the worst region according to non-agricultural unemployment rate (30.1 percent), non-agricultural employment rate (24.8 percent) and decreasing labour force and employment. The second worst region, Van (TRB2) follows Mardin (TRC3), with a high unemployment rate (19.7 percent) and also the second low employment ratio (29.5 percent). Also, we observe the highest increase (5.3 percentage points) in unemployment rate in this region.
A comprehensive assessment shows that Tekirdag-Edirne-Kırklareli (TR21, Thrace) and Ankara (TR51) are ranked at the first places among the best regions. Thrace has relatively low non-agricultural unemployment rate (9.8 percent) and the highest non-agricultural employment rate (49.5 percent). The non-agricultural unemployment rate in Ankara (11.6 percent) is relatively high but it is the only region among the best ones which had a decrease in unemployment rate (0.1 percentage points). Also, Ankara follows the Thrace with the second highest non-agricultural employment rate (46.7 percent).
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