Turkey: One in four employees works outside the social security system
In Turkey, around 8 million people work outside the official social security system.
This equates to almost one in every four employees in the country and represents a significant proportion of the total workforce of 32.7 million.
This high rate of unregistered employment represents a major gap in the country' s social safety net and impacts both workers' rights and state revenues.
Despite a slight increase in the total number of employed persons by only 33,000 over the past year, unregistered employment has once again risen in the second quarter. An analysis of insured wage labour reveals a strong geographical concentration.
Half of all insured employees are gathered in Turkey' s five largest cities: Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, and Bursa.
Istanbul dominates this landscape, accounting for 26.3 per cent of the total insured wage-earning workforce.
This imbalance underscores the regional disparities in the labour market and economic activity, where major cities attract the majority of formal employment. The widespread nature of unregistered employment has several negative consequences for the Turkish economy.
For workers, it means a lack of access to pensions, healthcare, and other social benefits provided by the official system.
For the state, it results in lost tax and social security revenue, which can strain public finances and limit the capacity to fund welfare services.
The situation can also create unfair competition between businesses, where those that hire unregistered labour may potentially operate with lower costs.
This undermines efforts to formalise the economy and create a more stable and equitable labour market for everyone in Turkey. Source: Haberglobal
Source: Haberglobal
