DİSK-AR Report: Turkey's Broadly Defined Unemployment Rate is Three Times the EU Average!

ANKARA - The Research Center of the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions (DİSK-AR) has published the "Outlook of Unemployment and Employment" report for the second quarter of 2025. Contrary to official unemployment figures, the report reveals the real and grave picture of the labor market in Turkey. According to DİSK-AR's calculation of broadly defined unemployment, 32 out of every 100 people in Turkey are broadly unemployed. This is nearly three times the European Union average.

Real Number of Unemployed 13 Million

According to the Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat), the number of seasonally adjusted narrow-definition unemployed was announced as 3 million 34 thousand people in the second quarter of 2025, while the calculation made by DISK-AR shows that the actual number of unemployed is much higher. According to the report, the number of broad-defined unemployed, which includes those who have lost hope of finding a job, those who are not looking for work but are ready to work, and those who work part-time and want to work more, was calculated as 13 million 15 thousand. This figure indicates an increase of 1.5 million in the last three months. The difference between narrow- and broad-defined unemployment rates was recorded as 23.4 points.

The "Invisible Iceberg" of Employment: Low Registered and Full-Time Employment

The DİSK-AR report focuses not only on unemployment rates but also on the quality of employment. According to the "Registered and Full-Time Employment (FTE)" measure, only 22.5 million of Turkey's 66.3 million working-age people are registered and employed full-time. Although the official employment rate announced by TurkStat is 49.2 percent, the rate of formal and full-time employment is only 33.9 percent. This reveals that the majority of employment in Turkey is informal, incomplete or precarious.

Women and Youth Unemployment

The report draws attention to the unemployment problem especially among women and youth. While broadly defined female unemployment is calculated at 40.7 percent, this rate remains at 26.8 percent for men. The situation among young women is even more critical. While the broad-defined unemployment rate for young women between the ages of 15-24 reaches 53.4 percent, this rate is 34.5 percent for young men. According to DİSK-AR, the broadly defined unemployment rate among young people has increased by 15.6 percentage points since the AKP came to power in 2002, rising from 26 percent to 41.7 percent. These data show that young people have lost hope of finding a job and have given up looking for a job.

Causes of Broadly Defined Unemployment in Turkey

According to DİSK-AR, the most important reasons for such high rates of broad-defined unemployment in Turkey are the quality of employment and structural problems in the labor market. The rapid increase in the number of those who have given up hope of finding a job, those who are not looking for work but are ready to work and the underemployed continues to push up broad-defined unemployment rates. The report emphasizes that the gap between narrow- and broad-defined unemployment is much higher than the EU average, which is 5.2 percentage points in the EU and 13.9 percentage points in Turkey.