Number of housewives increasing, survey finds

ISTANBUL - Hürriyet Daily News

Of the 868,000 people left out of the workforce, nearly half, or close to 500,000 described themselves as housewives. Hürriyet photo

Some 496,000 more women described themselves as housewives in March 2012 as opposed to the same period in the previous year, according to figures released by the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) in its eighth employment bulletin.

“Of the workforce over the age of 15, it is noteworthy that there is a significant increase in the ‘housewife’ status,” said the TEPAV report, noting that there were now 12.2 million housewives.
As there has not been an appreciable increase in unemployment despite the slight slowdown in the economy, the data needs to be examined more closely to determine the reason for the increase in the number of housewives, the report said, noting that the workforce participation rate fell from 49.9 percent in 2011 to 49.4 percent in 2012.

“In the March 2011-2012 period, the population of those left out of the workforce increased by 868,000.... It is worth noting that those left out of the workforce were made up significantly of housewives. Nearly 500,000 of these people, or nearly half, were comprised of housewives,” said the report.

Employment in service sector going up

The TEPAV report also outlined the fact that while there was a drop in employment in Turkey’s agriculture, industry, construction and other “production” sectors, there was an increase in employment in the services sector, namely the public sector with the creation of a total 571,000 new employment opportunities.

“In the March 2011-2012 period, most of the employment was in the public sector, especially health and education management, almost reaching an addition of 350,000 new employees. Other sectors that were able to create employment over the past 12 months were the wholesale and retail trade sectors and those sectors tied to them like logistics and storage,” the report said.
However, because of the government’s “soft landing” policies to slow down the economy, there has been a drop in employment in the production sectors in line with the slowdown in growth. In the agriculture sector, there was a 173,000-person drop in employment, a 28,000-person drop in manufacturing, a 40,000-person drop in construction and a 42,000-person drop in mining employment, according to the report’s findings.