One out of five people between the ages of 15 and 24 were unemployed in Turkey in December, with the country's youth unemployment rate hitting 19.8 percent, data from the Turkish Statistics Institute (TurkStat) showed on Friday reports Today's Zaman.

TurkStat announced that Turkey's jobless rate had edged up 0.3 percent in December over the same month a year ago to reach 10.1 percent. This marked the first return to double digits in unemployment figures since February 2012. The institute also stated that the unemployment rate for non-agricultural jobs had increased by 0.4 percent to 12.4 percent in December, while youth unemployment grew to 19.8 percent, a 1.7 percent increase over the same period of 2011.

Turkey is not the only country suffering from high youth unemployment figures, one of the most critical dimensions of unemployment, socially and politically. December's figures showed that the Turkish youth jobless rate remained below EU levels. The youth unemployment rate was 23.4 percent in the 27-member EU and 24 percent in the eurozone in December, the European statistics office EuroStat had earlier reported.