Neoliberalism, which reduces the purpose of all social life to making profits and winning by any means, continues to increase the intensity of this goal. In today’s world, where the small is devalued, especially technological developments, individuals imagine unlimited power in themselves. The individual sees themselves as the most important and unchangeable part of the economic and social structure and lives his/her life between production and consumption. The individual who has become alienated from reality understands only economic growth from gain, success, or production. Thus, all production activities that do not contribute to the economy, including intellectual knowledge, should be ignored and should not be seen as an achievement. The idea that the technology or information produced has the right to be developed if it provides maximum profit, whether or not it is compatible with the creation of the individual; It bypasses the spiritual dimension of all values and sacredness existing in social life and causes money to take place above all values.

Today’s working life, based on this reality, causes individuals to view money as a completely negative obsession, where working conditions are determined by the system, and employees have to endure their work in return for their wages. The individual constructs his/her world according to the meanings he/she gives to himself/herself and his/her environment, and this also applies to work. What the individual understands regarding work or what he/she expects from work, the meaning he/she will add to the world he/she lives in is shaped by this perspective. However, the problems related to working life cause the individual to remain at a more basic level without being able to shape their world of meaning. While the working individual plans to work and earn to achieve his/her goals and to build a prosperous life for himself/herself when he/she is involved in working life, he/she encounters the state of deprivation conceptualised with the phenomenon of working poverty in today’s working life. This is because today’s socio-economic structure aims for individuals to work more and consume more. 

Within the goal of a prosperous life, the individual first starts to think and then believes that he/she has needs beyond what he/she can imagine. Thus, consumption tends to go beyond the basic needs of the working individual, and a new period begins as soon as what a person spends exceeds what he or she earns: debt. Today’s world is being reshaped within the framework of the theory that claims to organise economic life through debt. With the imbalance between production and consumption, the desire to consume, which increases day by day with the imbalance between production and consumption balance, is perceived as a need. When consumption is accepted as a reward for work, borrowing becomes inevitable. Thus, the typology of indebted people is increasing numerically day by day. Naturally, working people are also involved in a vicious cycle of entering their working life, with a tendency to consume and borrow. In addition, when labour poverty, a global problem, affects working life beyond estimates, the problem becomes insurmountable. 

There are no human beings in the world who do not need a job to survive. Therefore, making a living by selling labour to someone else is not a new phenomenon in the world. Within the historical process and in parallel with the economic structure, each society has formed its own way and method of working, and the construction of meaning has been placed in the codes of societies. In relation to work, the realisation of a purpose is expressed as the first criterion. The physical, mental and emotional labour expenditure of an individual to produce goods and services for the consumption of himself/herself or someone else comes to mind as the equivalent of this goal.

The individual’s relationship with work is also considered a response to his/her efforts to make sense of the world he/she lives in. The answer to the question "Why does a person work?" varies both individually and socially. The ancient past of the question leads to concepts such as employment, labour and profession in today’s world with different answers. Today, it is accepted that there is a directly proportional relationship between working and earning income, but work also includes voluntary activities that provide spiritual satisfaction. Through work, individuals can gain happiness, satisfaction, and mental health. In the same way, it is possible for the individual to achieve what he/she wants through work and the "success" he/she gains afterwards. Therefore, work is becoming an indispensable field for individuals to develop intellectually along with maintaining life. Today’s people feel complete with success and gain self-confidence as they gain in material and moral terms. The relationship between work and poverty caused labour movements due to the poor working conditions of workers in pre-industrial times, and while poverty aids were provided for everyone, after a while, these aids for employees were cut off, and the presumption that employees were not poor emerged. In this context, the answer to what poverty is or who can be poor will also determine the basic concept of the subject, the phenomenon of "working poverty". The problem of creating a conceptual framework, which is the most important disadvantage of social phenomena, also reveals itself in the concept of poverty. There is no common prototype of the poor that is accepted or understood by every person or society living in the world. Each mind develops poverty solutions, or national/international policies against it at the level it sees and makes sense of in its own mental world and physical geography. The common situation regarding the phenomenon of poverty is that it is a shameful situation for every society and mind.

In modern times, individuals are no longer working to save the day or to meet their basic nutritional needs. In today’s world, individuals are eager to work and buy many products that they need beyond their needs, which they feel as a need with the guidance of popular culture. In today’s economic life, the human desire for consumption drives the cult of production. In addition, consuming does not arise because of any need; the individual’s freedom to consume is also related to their position in social life. Employees who tend to consume what they earn in their working life in their social life face the danger of debt due to the attractiveness and limitlessness of consumption. With the effect of the change in the answers given to the question "why does a person work?" discussed in the first chapter, individuals are now involuntarily entering the cult of existence through consumption.

Again, in working life, individuals can eliminate many workloads with the development of technology, but at the same time, they acquire new workloads. Employees who purchase many electronic devices for work life think that these devices will lighten their work hours and even enable them to be smart assistants at many points. In reality, many technological developments that will facilitate working life do not reduce or regulate the workload and intensity of employees; on the contrary, they cause workflows to be moved out of working hours. In the big cities of the world, the first hour of the first day of work goes to the expenses of that day. Although this situation has become commonplace, it is now a means of spreading precarity despite the fact that the theoretical infrastructure of work is considered an important means of avoiding precarity. In recent years, the likelihood of full-time employed workers facing poverty in the workplace has increased. The most important indicators of this are credit card utilisation rates, exceeding credit limits, and banks’ high profits.

Today, a significant proportion of labourers live in the "survival" level. Liveability indices give important clues into today’s working conditions, which do not differ significantly from societies of the first era that made a living by hunting and gathering. This situation, expressed as a result of the perspective focused on money, is reflected in the indices; according to ILO reports, 327 million wage earners today are paid at or below the minimum wage. Crisis periods witness significant disruptions both in labour life and in the individual lives of employees. Borrowing mechanisms work faster during crises, and employees are involved in borrowing mechanisms, especially during crises. In this case, the relations of production undergo certain changes, and the processes of individual self-control are transferred to banks or institutions to which they are indebted. Thus, the shifting centre of control will also change the spending habits and behaviours of the individual. Borrowing from employees is generally realised in order to reproduce their labour power. Thus, borrowing begins to be effective in working life through production processes. In periods when borrowing increases, significant decreases occur in wages or situations where wages remain constant, which leads to the impoverishment of employees and the forced abandonment of consumption habits. In this context, consumer loans are seen as an important saviour (!) that ensures the continuity of consumption habits that are preferred as a borrowing method. As a matter of fact, consumer credit has been shown to be an important cause of the crisis experienced in our country recently. The existence of individuals working to pay off their debts or working for the duration of their debts confirms this fact.

This article titled "The Effects of Consumption Habits and Borrowing on Working Life in the Context of Employee Poverty" aims to analyse the transformation experienced by individuals in working life while simultaneously interpreting how this transformation affects the entire working order, especially the individual. The study, in which a literature review, one of the qualitative analysis methods, and data related to working life are used, consists of three parts. The first part is titled "Employee Poverty as a Global Problem" and analyses, discusses, and evaluates the phenomenon of employee poverty through the change in the individual’s perception of work, the working individual, and poverty and work. Based on the fact that the change in the sociological view of work paves the way for many changes in the social structure, not paying attention to such problems, especially on a global scale, will bring about important social, economic, political, and therefore social problems. The second part of the study is entitled "A Vicious Cycle in Working Life: Working, Consuming and Borrowing". It is discussed that the whole life of the working individual undergoes a change first at the stage of thought and then at the point of behaviour with the change in the tendency to consume in the working life, followed by borrowing. In this section, how means and purposes of consumption manipulate the individual are also conveyed, and the social implications of this are highlighted. The last chapter is titled "The Changing Content of Working Life and the Effect of Borrowing on Working Life". In this section, the changing nature of today’s working life and the effect of borrowing on working life are discussed. The framework of this discussion is the passive structure of an individual in today’s working life, the desire to consume, and the efforts of an exhausted individual to save the day. The changing content of work becomes more valuable in this sense, and individuals lose their ability to be themselves among the gears of the economy. This situation, which can be considered the beginning of social problems, will open the door to many more problems in the future. The study concludes with a concluding chapter discussing the current situation within this framework.