Turkish official unemployment rate drops to 8.2 percent

Turkey’s unemployment rate fell to 8.2 percent of the workforce in the three months from April to June, from 9.4 percent in the same period in 2011, official data showed on Wednesday.

The number of unemployed people fell by 278,000 over the period to reach 2.272 million, Turkish Statistics Institute said on its website on the basis of a survey of 96,613 people.

Turkey’s economy staged a spectacular recovery from the global crisis, growing by 8.9 percent in 2010 and by 8.5 percent in 2011.

Ankara aspires to join the ranks of the world’s top 10 economies by 2023, but its growth has already showed signs of slowdown by the last quarter of 2011, with a rate of 5.2 percent -- considered a healthy slowdown by the Ankara government.

Unemployment remains a major challenge for the government in a country where many young people enter the workforce each year.

Turkey’s jobless rate is determined through household surveys across the country which are then used to make a nationwide three-month projection.

But experts say the figures do not reflect the overall picture because of widespread undeclared or hidden unemployment, or the employment of highly-educated people in menial jobs.