Özet:

Despite the outstanding growth rates of the Turkish economy in the last decade, the rise in the unemployment rates raise the debate about the notion of jobless growth.  The main aim of this article is to address the validity of the jobless growth hypothesis by analyzing the data of the Turkish Economy. In this context, the study tries to examine the tendency in production, employment, productivity and real wages of the Turkish economy as a whole and the manufacturing industry in particular for the period of 1980-2008. Thereby the employment intensity of growth of real value added at the sectoral level is being analyzed. The employment intensity of growth of value added or output is measured via employment elasticity. In this study, a simple decomposition procedure which covers the major determinants of employment elasticity, is outlined and utilized. According to this decomposition, the major determinant of employment elasticity is the allocation of value added growth between employment growth and wage growth.  In real terms the share of the wage bill in value added is determined by elasticity of wages with respect to output and the movements of producer prices relative to consumer prices. The decomposition method used enables us to quantify the relative importance of these factors. The empirical analysis of the data about the Turkish manufacturing industries indicates that the Turkish economy realized significant increases in production, but with only small improvements in productivity and employment during 2003-2008 Period, thus bring a threat in sustaining economic growth in the future. This situation should be taken as a result of the competitiveness of the Turkish manufacturing industries which derived from lower wages, but not from technological improvements.