Harvard Center for Textile & Apparel Research

B.Tan Overview of the Turkish Textile and Apparel Industry 34
The Ministry of Labor’s number for the number of employees in the textile and
apparel industry was 505,153 in 1999. However, it is not possible to obtain exact statistics
due to the fact that many small firms that employ unregistered workers to avoid taxes are
not included in the studies. According to the estimates of unions, it is estimated that there
are more than 2,000,000 workers employed in the Turkish textile and apparel industry
(Dunya, 1998).
The State Statistics Institute collects information on establishments that have more
than 10 employees. The distribution of the number of establishments that employ more
than 10 employees in the textile and apparel industry is given in Tables 37 and 38. Tables
39 and 40 give the distribution of the number of employees in different size establishments.
The average number of employees in a textile establishment was 135 and the average
number of employees in an apparel establishment was 69 in 1995.
Table 37. Size Distribution of the Establishments in the Apparel Industry (as % )
Size No. of
employees
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995
5 10-24 62.9 47.4 39.0 34.1 31.1 30.6 30.5 48.1 44.3 41.1 34.8
6 25-49 19.3 24.6 26.9 28.6 30.9 31.2 31.3 25.5 27.7 28.7 31.7
7 50-99 9.4 15.0 19.0 20.6 20.2 20.5 20.4 14.2 14.6 15.2 16.1
8 100-199 5.1 8.7 9.6 9.6 11.0 10.3 11.7 8.1 8.6 9.4 10.5
9 200-499 2.5 3.4 4.1 5.3 5.1 5.8 5.0 3.5 4.2 4.8 5.4
10 500-999 0.6 0.5 1.0 1.4 1.4 1.1 1.1 0.6 0.5 0.7 1.3
11 1000- 0.1 0.5 0.4 0.5 0.3 0.4 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1 0.1
Average size: 6.23. Source: State Statistics Institute
Table 38. Size Distribution of the Establishments in the Textile Industry (as % )
Size No. of
employees
1985 1986 1987 1988 1989 1990 1991 1992 1993 1994 1995
5 10-24 21.6 13.3 9.5 7.5 6.8 6.7 7.0 13.6 12.1 10.7 8.1
6 25-49 15.4 14.6 13.9 13.6 14.3 14.3 15.3 16.8 17.5 17.0 16.1
7 50-99 15.1 17.6 19.8 19.4 18.8 19.3 20.3 18.5 18.1 17.4 16.1
8 100-199 16.5 20.8 20.4 18.0 19.8 18.5 22.6 21.0 21.0 21.2 20.8
9 200-499 17.3 19.0 18.9 20.5 20.0 22.9 21.1 20.3 22.0 23.9 24.3
10 500-999 10.5 4.6 8.9 12.3 13.4 10.1 10.7 7.1 5.7 7.3 11.6
11 1000- 3.6 10.1 8.7 8.7 6.8 8.2 3.1 2.7 3.6 2.5 3.1
Average size: 6.4. Source: State Statistics Institute