Turkish Labor Market Research Articles

English Skills, Labour Market Status and Earnings of Turkish Women

In this paper, we investigate the effect of the level of English skills on the labour market outcomes of Turkish women, using data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007. By adopting a bivariate equation framework, we jointly model the effect of English skills on labour market status and, conditional on being a wage earner, on monthly earnings and occupational status. The multinomial equation that explains labour market status allows for a different effect of language knowledge on the probability of being employed, unemployed but actively looking for a job, an unpaid family worker or involved in household tasks. The results indicate that being proficient in English is conditionally associated with a higher probability of being employed as a wage earner and, to a lesser extent, unemployed but looking for a job, whereas it decreases the likelihood of being involved in household tasks. Moreover, there is a significant conditional correlation between having a high level of skills in English and earnings, which is only modestly reduced when job-related variables and (especially) occupation dummies are included as additional controls. Indeed, being proficient in English barely affects occupational status when selection into employment status is controlled for. Therefore, the knowledge of foreign languages (in this case English) seems to stimulate labour market participation and earnings capacity, but does not substantially affect the occupational position of women in the Turkish labour market.

Discrimination against women in Turkish labor market: an analysis of gender wage gap with Blinder-Oaxaca and Juhn-Murphy-Pierce decomposition methods, 2004-2017 period

Purpose - The average education level of female in the labor force is higher than the education level of their male counterparts in Turkey. Since education level is the most important factor in the determination of wages, the average wage of female employees is expected to be higher than that of male employees. However, the data shows the reverse. In this paper, the gender wage gap in the 2004-2017 period is analyzed to understand what portion of the wage gap is due to discrimination and what portion is due to human capital factors. The sample used in the econometric analysis is the Household Labor Force Survey microdata in the 2004-2017 period. Blinder-Oaxaca and Juhn- Murphy-Pierce Decomposition methods are applied, and the results show that the gender wage gap in favor of male employees in the said period cannot be explained by human capital differences, but by discrimination against women in the labor market. Methodology - First wage equation regressions are set to see whether there is a difference between the effects and significance of explanatory variables on wages of male employees and females. Then, Blinder Oaxaca and Juhn Murphy Pierce decomposition methods are applied to see whether the wage gap can be explained by human capital differences or not. Findings- Data shows that there is a gender wage gap in favor of men in Turkish labor market and a strong discrimination against women. As for 2004, considering the human capital endowments, on average, women would have earned 5.2% more than what male employees earn. However, data show that male employees earn 15.1% more than what female employees earn, which can be interpreted that female employees have a wage-loss of about 20.3% due to discrimination. Both the wage gap and discrimination effects vary between regions. Most industrialized/developed and regions with high agriculture share in employment are usually the ones with larger gap and higher degree of discrimination. The wage gap and discrimination effects have declined until 2010, but they increased after that. Conclusion- Gender wage gap and discrimination based loss in wages are seem to be persistent so far in Turkish labor market, but as the average level of female employees increase the gap is expected to decline in long run.

Female Emotional Labour in Turkish Call Centres: Smiling Voices Despite Low Job Satisfaction

This article discusses Turkish women workers’ experiences in Turkey’s growing call centre sector, focusing on the emotional labour they perform in relation to job satisfaction and gendered work patterns within the Turkish labour market. The study uses both quantitative and qualitative data generated from six Turkish cities. Our findings demonstrate that pecuniary emotional labour is a large requirement of women employees in the call centre business, and that performing such labour under time constraints harms their well-being. Low material rewards and lack of support in their relations with customers make it even more difficult to deal with the stress of emotional labour and lowers job satisfaction. Employees’ capacity to resist the negative aspects of work are largely limited by the conditions in Turkey such as high rates of unemployment, extensive employee circulation and lack of job security.

Emek Piyasalarında Eğitim Uyumsuzlukları ve Sektörler Arasında Ücretlere Etkisi: Türkiye Örneği

The incidence of mismatch and its pay effects vary not only across countries but also across sectors due to different institutional arrangements. The first aim of the paper is to estimate education mismatches in the Turkish labor market. Our second aim is to distinguish the impact of education mismatches on wages in public and private sectors. The results of the analysis show returns on overeducation are lower than required education in both sectors similar to many other country examples. Moreover, we also show that wage differences between overeducation and required education are smaller in the private sector, and through Oaxaca decomposition method most of it can be explained by endowments. Lastly, the effect of undereducation on wages differs across sectors and we conclude that human capital model is not applicable to Turkish public sector.

Formal and informal sectors: is there any wage differential?

ABSTRACTThe main objective of this paper is to investigate if a wage difference exists between formal and informal sectors in the case of the Turkish labour market using a sample of wageworkers. To this end, we use data for 2004 and 2009 and a novel definition of the informal sector. On the methodological front, we adopt three alternative decomposition techniques, namely, the Oaxaca-Ransom [(1994). On discrimination and the decomposition of wage differentials. Journal of Econometrics, 61, 5–21] decomposition in the context of mean regression, the Machado and Mata [(2005). Counterfactual decomposition of changes in wage distributions using quantile regression. Journal of Applied Econometrics, 20(4), 445–465] decomposition in the quantile regression framework and the non-parametric decomposition method proposed by Nopo [(2008). Matching as a tool to decompose wage gap. The Review of Economics and Statistics, 90(2), 290–299]. The results reveal the existence of a wage gap between the two sectors. We found education and experience to be key determinants of earnings. The findings of this paper have implications for policies, which might be directed towards developing approaches with a focus on education and experience.

DETERMINANTS OF EDUCATION MISMATCH IN TURKEY: EVIDENCE FROM HOUSEHOLD LABOR FORCE SURVEYS

Educational mismatch indicates the position in which a worker possesses a level of education higher or lower than the required level of education to hold and perform a particular job. Using Turkish Household Labor Surveys for the period 2009-2014 and 2-digit occupations, this study attempts to analyze some stylized facts about and determinants of educational mismatch in Turkish labor market. It is observed that the incidence of overeducation and its evolution differ for high school and higher education graduates. Taking into account these differences, general profile of overeducated workers is presented via rich descriptive analysis. Separate annual multilogistic regressions are estimated for 2009 and 2014 to find and compare the determinants of educational mismatch. Results indicate that the incidence of overeducation is rising among high school graduates. Gender gaps are observed to be wider across high school graduates. The probability of being overeducated is higher for younger workers with less tenure. The effect of marital status, and status of the workplace (public/private) has different effects on the probability of being overeducated for high school and higher education graduates.

WHAT ARE THE TRENDS IN WOMEN’S LABOUR FORCE PARTICIPATION IN TURKEY?

Labour force participation (LFP) by women is an important driving force of the economic growth and sustainable development. However, one of the salient characteristics of Turkish labour market is the distinctly lower female labour force participation rate (FLFPR). In 1955, the FLFPR was 72%, which decreased to 32.5 % in 2016. Further, it is very low as per the EU–28 (52%) and OECD (51.9%) standards. The reasons of low FLFPR in Turkey are multidimensional. On the one hand, it could relate, to some extent, to the deep-rooted traditional gender roles (socio-cultural), and on the other hand, to the economic barriers. The process of urbanization and agricultural shedding are the two driving forces contributing to this decreasing trend. Thus, FLFPR in Turkey need to be improved through sustaining investment on education and creating job opportunities for the women. Government regulations should aim at promoting formal employment for undereducated women and increasing the quality of jobs. Many women could be encouraged to work by offering affordable childcare. Sustaining investment on the education of girls and women would also improve FLFPR and access to higher education would increase the LFP of women in Turkey. Keywords: female labour force participation rate, labour market, Turkey

Underemployment in the Turkish Labor Market

Using individual-level data from Household Labor Force Surveys for the period 2009-2015, this paper examines two aspects of underemployment in Turkey. First, it examines the extent of underemployment by gender and educational attainment levels. Second, by estimating a Probit model, it investigates the determinants of underemployment for the wage and salary earners. Findings indicate that the effect of gender on the likelihood of underemployment is not statistically significant, and there is a negative association between educational attainment and the likelihood of underemployment. Within the group of higher educated individuals, there are important differences across fields of study.

Discouraged workers in the Turkish Labor Market:1988-2014

This study investigates the trends of and factors behind discouraged workers in Turkey during the period 1988-2014. According to ILO (1982), discouraged workers are those who wanted to work, but are not employed, and not job seekers anymore because they believe there is no work available for them. In this paper, it is put forward that the number of discouraged workers in Turkey cannot be ignored. Using data from Turkstat, World Development Indicators, and Turkish Ministry of Development, locally weighted (LOESS) regressions are estimated for the possible determinants of discouragement. The results demonstrate that discouragement increases rapidly after a certain per capita income threshold is reached. Besides, as unemployment increases, people are more eager to become discouraged, which is an expected relationship. Surprisingly, in the recent period of increasing employment, a rise both in the number and share of discouraged workers is detected in Turkey. The crisis years (especially 2001) seriously accelerated discouragement at higher secondary and tertiary school enrolment rates. Furthermore, discouraged workers increased gradually as services value added share increased, whereas industrial and agricultural value added shrank. Urbanization also triggers discouragement. These findings are expected to have important policy implications for Turkey, which tackles with significant issues regarding unemployment levels and human capital development.

Migration and Precarity in Labour Market: Case of Cameroonian Migrants in Turkey

Migration has become more than ever an important issue on the media, political sphere and object of many academic works. The year 2015 was punctuated by a series of migration crisis, the UNFPA reported that 3.3 per cent of the world's population lived outside their country of origin. Currently, Turkey plays an important role in international migration. This paper is set to look at migration and precarity concepts in Turkish labour market. Previous researches focused on Africans in general migrating to Turkey but this research tackles the specific case of Cameroonians. The main purpose is to perceive the working condition of Cameroonian migrants workers in Istanbul. This article provides an insight on the rush of Cameroonian migrants to Turkey and contributes in understanding the precarious nature on the Turkish labor market. This involves the social, economic and legal framework of Cameroonian workers. It has been designed to investigate specific aspects such as their educational backgrounds, working conditions, ways of recruitment, professional inter-relations, legal status, challenges and vulnerability as foreign workers. The fieldwork took place from the 18th of March to 23rd, 2016. Through an empirical study 16 structured and semi structured interviews were conducted in various districts in Istanbul.

Defining and Measuring Informality: The Case of Turkish Labor Market

In this study, we consider how informality can be defined and measured in the Turkish labor market. The empirical analysis consists of developing three alternative definitions of labor informality, and exploring the relevance and implications of each for the Turkish labor market using descriptive statistics and multivariate probit analysis of the likelihood of informality under each definition. We find that social security registration criterion is a better measure of informality in the Turkish labor market given its ability to capture key relationships between several individual and employment characteristics and the likelihood of informality.

Effects of perceptions of corporate social responsibilityon employer attractiveness

The importance given to Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) has become a powerful strategy that is used to attract the best talent in recent years. This research aims to understand the impact of CSR activities are having to increase organizational attractiveness in the Turkish labor market context. Using five dimensional CSR framework of Dahlsrud (2006) we measure entry level job candidates’ perceptions about firms. We aim to answer two research questions: Do CSR activities increase the attractiveness of the organization? And which of the five dimensions of CSR affect the candidate to the largest extent? Policy capturing methods are used to gather data from 178 potential job candidates to answer these questions. Results indicate overall effect of CSR is highly positive on employer attractiveness. In addition, employee relations, community relations and product sustainability are the leading dimensions in terms of affecting job candidates’ evaluations of organizational attractiveness.

Sector-Based Analysis of the Education-Occupation Mismatch in the Turkish Labor Market

The aim of this study was to investigate the existence of sectorial undereducation and overeducation problems in the Turkish labor market. In order to cope with this issue, the 2009 Household Labor Force Survey (TurkStat), which covers 145,934 individuals within 27 sectors, was utilized. An objective measure of education-occupation mismatch based on the mean level of schooling was used as the main tool in the analysis. The results revealed two important points. Firstly, high levels of undereducation and overeducation problems in the sectoral job groups were found. Secondly, the results showed that these problems are not specific to a few sectors, but they are widespread among many sectoral job groups, which has created serious problems for the Turkish economy. Moreover, we employed Oaxaca decomposition to investigate the effects of overeducation and undereducation on wage outcomes, and the findings indicate that education-occupation mismatches in the Turkish labor market are also reflected on such outcomes. Finally, the Turkish labor market penalizes workers who acquire less education than the adequate level to perform their jobs, whereas it rewards the workers who obtain more education than the adequate level, but not to a considerable extent.

Recent Trends in the Turkish Labor Market

Recent Trends in the Turkish Labor Market

Returns to Foreign Language Skills in a Developing Country: The Case of Turkey

Foreign language skills represent a form of human capital that can be rewarded in the labor market. Drawing on data from the Adult Education Survey of 2007, this is the first study estimating returns to foreign language skills in Turkey. We contribute to the literature on the economic value of language knowledge, with a special focus on a country characterized by fast economic and social development. Although English is the most widely spoken foreign language in Turkey, we initially consider the economic value of different foreign languages among the employed males aged 25 to 65. We find positive and significant returns to proficiency in English and Russian, which increase with the level of competence. Knowledge of French and German also appears to be positively rewarded in the Turkish labor market, although their economic value seems mostly linked to an increased likelihood to hold specific occupations rather than increased earnings within occupations. Focusing on English, we also explore the heterogeneity in returns to different levels of proficiency by frequency of English use at work, birth-cohort, education, occupation and rural/urban location. The results are also robust to the endogenous specification of English language skills.

Sector-Based Analysis of the Education–Occupation Mismatch in the Turkish Labor Market

AbstractThe aim of this study was to investigate the existence of sectorial undereducation and overeducation problems in the Turkish labor market. In order to cope with this issue, the 2009 Household Labor Force Survey (TurkStat), which covers 145,934 individuals within 27 sectors, was utilized. An objective measure of education-occupation mismatch based on the mean level of schooling was used as the main tool in the analysis. The results revealed two important points. Firstly, high levels of undereducation and overeducation problems in the sectoral job groups were found. Secondly, the results showed that these problems are not specific to a few sectors, but they are widespread among many sectoral job groups, which has created serious problems for the Turkish economy. Moreover, we employed Oaxaca decomposition to investigate the effects of overeducation and undereducation on wage outcomes, and the findings indicate that education-occupation mismatches in the Turkish labor market are also reflected on such outcomes. Finally, the Turkish labor market penalizes workers who acquire less education than the adequate level to perform their jobs, whereas it rewards the workers who obtain more education than the adequate level, but not to a considerable extent.Keywords: Overeducation * Undereducation * Sector-based education-occupation mismatch * Human capital * Turkish labor marketIn economics, there is a consensus that education is an essential ingredient of economic growth and personal welfare. The growth literature (i.e., Barro, 1989, 1999; Lucas, 1988; Mankiw, Romer, & Weil, 1992) theoretically and empirically shows that education, ensuring human capital accumulation, positively and significantly affects long-term economic growth.1 In a similar vein, the human capital literature, following the seminal paper of Becker (1964), argues that education increases personal income, as it constitutes the main determinant of workers' productivity, and the workers are paid according to their marginal products. Consistent with this argument, the majority of the existing empirical studies show that the return of education is significantly positive. For example, measures of the return of education in the Turkish labor market indicate a high return for each year of schooling (Bakis, 2012; Dayioglu & Kasnakoglu, 1997; Oksuzler, 2008; Ozcan, Ozcan, & Ucdogruk, 2003; Tansel, 1994).2An implicit assumption in these literatures is that workers' human capital is efficiently utilized in the labor market and, relatedly, workers earn wages equal to their marginal products. However, another strand of literature, following the seminal papers of Freeman (1976) and Duncan and Hoffman (1981), questions this implicit relationship and draws attention to potential labor market inefficiencies in matching occupations and workers according to the required and actual skill levels. This mismatch in the labor market potentially leads to some workers being placed in occupations that require less human capital than the worker has acquired. Such a worker who has acquired more education and has more human capital than his/her job requires is said to be overeducated, whereas a person with less education than what his/her job requires is classified as undereducated. An implication of this overeducation and undereducation problem is that overeducated (undereducated) workers are likely to earn less (more) income compared to similarly educated ones whose education levels actually match their jobs.In this paper, we examine the prevalence of overeducation and undereducation in Turkey since there are there are substantial inefficiencies in the Turkish labor market that may lead to education- occupation mismatches. According to results of Turkish Household Labor Force Surveys, more than half of the workers found jobs on their own rather than through employment agencies, which indicates possible inefficiencies in job searching and matching. …

The Analysis of Turkish Labor Market with Structural Vector Error Correction Model (SVECM)

This paper analyses dynamics of Turkish labor market by using a small macroeconomic model and cointegration approach. Findings obtained in this papers show that real wages are positively related to employment and productivity in the long run. This paper also examines adjustment mechanism in the labor market by estimating Error Correction Models (ECMs). The results point out that the labor market slowly responds to changes in macroeconomic conditions through real wages. Furthermore, the results of impulse response and variance decomposition analyses, depending on SVECM, indicate that real wages have a considerable impact on productivity, while the effect of productivity on real wages is small. Consequently, this paper asserts that real wages are key variable in Turkish labor market and there are a weak link between real wages and productivity and the rigidities in employment in the market.

Which Group of Individuals are subjected to Get Long-Term Unemployed During and After a Recession? Evidence from Turkey

This study tests the effects of individual characteristics on the incidence of being long-term unemployed in Turkey using data from Turkey’s Household Labor Force Surveys of 2010 and 2011 which are the first two following years of Global Economic Recession. The results indicate that females are more likely to be long-term unemployed than males and this result hinders for “gender discrimination” against women. The results also indicate that increases in education as well as age increases the probability of being long-term unemployed and this indicates inadequacy of education and experience in Turkish labor market.

Firm Size and Labour Market Segmentation Theory: Evidence from Turkish Micro Data

Wage formation in the labor market is analyzed with different perspectives and methods by Orthodox and Heterodox economists. Especially one of the main theories of how wages determined on the firm and industry is the theory of Segmented Labour Markets (SLM) based on the Institutional Economics and New Institutional Economics. Labor market segmentation theory suggests that jobs and labor are divided into labor market segments. While jobs are divided into “good jobs” and “bad jobs”, labor market is stratified according to job and wage. In this study, by drawing on micro-data from Turkish Statistical Institute (TurkStat) Househould Labour Force Survey (HLS), we aim to analyze the theory of SLM in Turkey on the basis of firm size for the year of 2011. In this context, Binary Logistic Regression Analysis was used. According to the analyses results, findings indicate that according to the firm size Turkish labour market shows a stratified structure in terms of gender, age, education, marital status, main activity of workplace (sector), status of workplace and occupations (International Standard Classification of Occupations-ISCO-88).

Defining and Measuring Informality in the Turkish Labor Market

This paper investigates how informality can be defined and measured in the Turkish labor market. Two alternative definitions of informality are used to explore their relevance and implications for the Turkish labor market using descriptive statistics. They are the enterprise definition and the social security definition. Further, contributions of individual and job characteristics to the likelihood of informality are investigated using multivariate probit analysis under the two definitions. The social security registration criterion is found to be a better measure of informality in the Turkish labor market given its ability to capture the key relationships between several individual and employment characteristics and the likelihood of informality.The study suggests that preference should be given to social security definition of labor informality for a more accurate depiction of the Turkish labor market. The suitability of the two alternative definitions of informality in the Turkish labor market and its implications have not been investigated before.