Turkey Labour Market: Virtue or Slavery ?

Demonstrations staging protests in an attempt to mold public opinion about bad working conditions are often-seen events in Turkey. The OECD stats literally support them.

Turkey-Slavery-Chart

The chart above clarifies that Turkish people extremely work hard in relative to other OECD countries and beat others with a huge spread in term of working hours. The percentage of employees working 50 hours or more a week is 46%, highly above OCED average of 13%. This data is also driving the country down on other social rankings. But, at least, Turkey is working slightly shorter hours comparing to 2004 but it is still far from looking optimistically.

The principal reason is, comparing to other countries listed on the chart, Turkey has a more labor-intensive structure in its industrial structure. Moreover, it is less industrialized. It is only after crucially required structural reforms are implemented, then we will able to see some normalization in the labor market.