Türkiye’s National Employment Strategy 2025–2028
By Bosphorus News Staff
Türkiye’s Ministry of Labour and Social Security has released its National Employment Strategy for 2025–2028, outlining quantitative goals to raise employment, reduce unemployment, increase female labour force participation and curb informality.
The document correctly identifies the structural weaknesses of the labour market. Youth unemployment remains elevated. Female participation remains structurally low. Informal employment distorts tax revenues and social protection. Skills mismatch continues to undermine productivity.
The diagnosis is not the problem.
The credibility of the strategy depends on how those targets will be reached. That is where the document becomes thin.
Targets Without a Growth Model
The strategy sets measurable objectives. It does not explain the macroeconomic structure that would make them achievable.
There is no sectoral employment projection. No breakdown of expected job creation across manufacturing, services or export sectors. No modelling of employment elasticity under different growth scenarios. No clarity on whether job gains depend on domestic demand recovery, industrial upgrading or labour-intensive expansion.
Labour outcomes in Türkiye have historically tracked credit cycles and sectoral concentration. Ignoring that linkage weakens the analytical foundation of the targets.
Employment goals without a defined growth engine are political statements, not economic projections.
Informality: Recognition Without Structural Intervention
The strategy reiterates the importance of combating informal employment. It refers to inspections, monitoring and awareness measures.
It does not address the structural drivers of informality:
- High non-wage labour costs
- Contribution burdens for small firms
- Enforcement asymmetries
- Limited sanction credibility
There is no proposal for recalibrating payroll taxation. No timetable for enforcement reform. No quantified compliance expansion target tied to institutional capacity.
Informality in Türkiye is not a behavioural issue. It is a cost structure issue. The strategy treats it primarily as the former.
Female Employment: Policy Language Without Fiscal Scale
The document highlights childcare, flexible work models and support schemes to increase women’s participation.
What is missing is fiscal architecture.
There is no detailed funding allocation. No infrastructure expansion schedule. No measurable childcare capacity targets. No legislative calendar defining regulatory change.
Increasing female employment requires large-scale care infrastructure and sustained fiscal commitment. The strategy references the objective. It does not cost it.
Digital and Green Transition: Strategic Framing, Limited Design
The strategy acknowledges automation, artificial intelligence and green transition pressures. It calls for reskilling and adaptation.
It does not define:
- The sectors at highest displacement risk
- The volume of workers requiring retraining
- The budgetary scale of reskilling programmes
- The division of financial responsibility between state and private sector
Structural transformation is described. Implementation architecture is not specified.
Financing and Enforcement: The Missing Core
Across pillars, the same gap appears.
Programmes are listed. Targets are stated. Monitoring indicators are defined.
Funding sources are not clearly mapped. Enforcement mechanisms are not strengthened. Institutional capacity constraints are not confronted directly.
A labour strategy without binding fiscal allocation and enforcement reform remains conditional on favourable growth conditions.
If growth slows, the targets become unreachable. The document does not present contingency planning.
Management Framework, Not Structural Reset
Türkiye’s National Employment Strategy 2025–2028 is a comprehensive coordination framework. It catalogues problems accurately and aligns ministries around shared indicators.
What it does not do is alter the structural parameters of the labour market.
There is no labour tax reform. No decisive move on contribution burdens. No aggressive compliance restructuring. No structural reallocation roadmap tied to industrial policy.
The strategy assumes improvement through incremental alignment.
Türkiye’s labour market has historically required deeper correction than alignment alone can deliver.
The success of the strategy will depend less on its internal coherence and more on political willingness to implement reforms that raise short-term costs in exchange for long-term formalisation and productivity gains.
At present, the document sets targets. It does not yet demonstrate the structural intervention required to secure them.