Ankara targets to drop unemployment to 5%, minister

The main targets of Turkey's National Employment Strategy were to drop unemployment rate to 5%, increase employment rate to 50% and decrease unregistered employment in non-agricultural sectors under 15%, as Anatolia news agency reports quoting Turkish Labor & Social Security Minister Faruk Celik as saying on Wednesday. "We will increase employment rate 75% in informatics sector, 25% in finance sector, 135% in construction sector, 100% in health sector and 75% in tourism sector by 2023," he said. Noting that Turkey's population was 73.6 million, Celik said that 54.7 million of the population was at the age of 15 or over. Labor force in Turkey was 27.8 million, said Celik, adding that 25.4 million people were being employed in the country. The number of unemployed people is 2.3 million, he said, adding that the number of unemployed people dropped 944,000 in the past three months.