Abstract
The persistently high unemployment rate in Turkey is the result of rigidities and structural issues attributable to both supply and demand factors. Most researchers and politicians have identified this high level of unemployment rate as one of Turkey’s most important socio-economic problems. Despite the relative success of the Turkish economy in terms of macroeconomic stability and high growth performance since the 2001 crisis, a failure to show any significant improvement in the unemployment issue has increased academics’ interest in this topic. To resolve the issues in the Turkish labour market, in recent years Turkey has been looking for ways to make its labour market more flexible. This chapter examines the Turkish labour market in detail and develops some policy recommendations to ensure long-lasting improvements in it.
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- 1.
Although this is true for the short term, Tansel et al. (2016) found empirical support (i.e. cointegration between the labour force participation rate and the unemployment rate) for the unemployment invariance hypothesis in Turkey, which suggests that the long-run unemployment rate is independent of the labour force.
- 2.
For more information on labour market flexibility and reforms, see MUSIAD (2015).
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Bilgin, M.H., Danis, H. (2018). Turkish Labour Market: Outlook, Key Challenges, and Policy Recommendations. In: Aysan, A., Babacan, M., Gur, N., Karahan, H. (eds) Turkish Economy. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-70380-0_14
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