TÜRKİYE’DE ÇALIŞMA SÜRELERİ, AŞIRI ÇALIŞMA VE GELİR ESNEKLİĞİ
Working Hours, Overworking, and Income Elasticity in Turkey

Summary/Abstract: In this article, we firstly analyze how working hours and overworking evolved for different categories/groups in Turkey during the 2004-2019 period. Second, we estimate income elasticity of working hours for various categories/groups. The main purpose of the article is to contribute to the formation of the literature on working hours in Turkey which is almost non-existent. For this purpose, we exploit TÜİK Household Labor Force Survey (HLFS) data for the years 2004-2019. We harmonized and combined the annual HLFS data to create a comprehensive dataset consisting of approximately 2 million observations. The wage elasticity of working hours was estimated using the ordinary least squares method. The main results we obtained are; 1) working hours and overworking rates are very high in Turkey and 2) although both decreased significantly in the period of 2011-2019, Turkey still ranks very high in both in the world. In addition, 3) working hours are particularly high for workers with less education, low income, and men. However, 4) working hours decreased the most for these very groups and thus the differences between the groups decreased considerably. Moreover, 5) working hours are much higher in the private sector than in the public sector, and 6) almost all of the decline in working hours in the 2011-2019 period occurred in the private sector, while working hours remained almost unchanged in the public sector. On the other hand; 1) income elasticity is very low and negative for full-time employees, In addition, for full-time and paid employees; 2) income elasticity is quite low and positive in the highest and lowest income groups, 3) and it is relatively high and negative in other income groups.

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