Turkey’s Labor Market During Covid-19 Pandemic: A K-Modes Analysis

Year 2023, Volume: 38 Issue: 1, 142 - 157, 20.03.2023

Bige Kucukefe , Nilüfer Kaya Kanlı

https://doi.org/10.24988/ije.1096088

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant economic contractions and employment vulnerabilities for the economies, including Turkey. The pandemic exacerbated structural challenges related to high unemployment, low labor force participation, and widespread informality. This study aims to analyze the differences in the labor market between the 2019 and 2020 years in Turkey. For this purpose, we used the clustering method. While applying the clustering method, we used education type, gender, and age group data. Moreover, the study also employed information from employed, unemployed, and not in labor force data. We implemented a Machine Learning method, K-modes analysis, using the Turkish Statistical Institute's employment statistics and Labor Force Statistics Micro Datasets for 2019 and 2020.

Keywords

Covid-19, Pandemic, Turkey, Labour Market, Employment, K-Modes

Covid-19 Pandemisinde Türkiye İşgücü Piyasası: Bir K-Modes Analizi

Abstract

COVID-19 küresel salgını, Türkiye de dahil olmak üzere ekonomilerde büyük daralmalar ve istihdam kırılganlıklarına neden oldu. Yüksek işsizlik, düşük işgücü katılımı ve geniş çaplı kayıtsız işgücüne bağlı yapısal problemleri şiddetlendirdi. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Türkiye’de işgücü piyasasındaki 2019 ve 2020 yıllarındaki değişimi incelemektir. Bu amaçla, kümeleme yöntemini kullandık. Kümeleme yöntemini uygularken, çalışan, işsiz ve iş gücüne dahil olmayanlar; eğitim durumu, cinsiyet ve yaş grubu verilerini kullandık. Bir makina öğrenmesi yöntemi olan K-Modes analizini, 2019 ve 2020 yılları için Türkiye İstatistik Kurumu’nun istihdam istatistikleri ve İşgücü İstatistikleri Mikro Veri Setleri’ne uyguladık.

Keywords

K-Modes., Covid-19, Küresel Salgın, pandemi, İşgücü Piyasası, İstihdam

References

• Alon, T., Coskun, S., Doepke, M., Koll, D., & Tertilt, M. (2021). From Mancession to Secession: Women's Employment in Regular and Pandemic Recessions, No. w28632. National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Anderberg, M.R. (1973), Cluster analysis for applications, Academic Press, New York.
• Arthur D. & Vassilvitskii, S. (2006). How Slow Is The K-Means Method?, In Proceedings of the 22. Annual Symposium on Computational Geometry,144-153. 22nd ACM Symposium on Computational Geometry (SoCG), Arizona. New York: Association for Computing Machinery.
• Baştav, L. (2021). Turkish Economic Growth:(Non) Labour Creating? (2000-2018). Sosyoekonomi, 29(50), 35-50.
• Bauer, A., & Weber, E. (2021). COVID-19: how much unemployment was caused by the shutdown in Germany?, Applied Economics Letters, 28(12), 1053-1058.
• Brada, J. C., Gajewski, P., & Kutan, A. M. (2021). Economic resiliency and recovery, lessons from the financial crisis for the COVID-19 pandemic: A regional perspective from Central and Eastern Europe. International Review of Financial Analysis, 74(101658).
• Business for Goals Platform (2020). “Survey on Impact of COVID-19 on Enterprises and Needs” https://www.tr.undp.org/content/turkey/en/home/presscenter/pressreleases/2020/04/B4G-anket.html
• Cajner, T., Crane, L.D., Decker, R. A., Grigsby, J., Hamins-Puertolas, A., Hurst, E., Kurz, C., & Yildirmaz, A. (2020). The US Labor Market During The Beginning Of The Pandemic Recession, BFI Working Paper.
• Coibion, O., Gorodnichenko, Y., & Weber, M. (2020). Labor markets during the COVID-19 crisis: A preliminary view, No. w27017. National Bureau of Economic Research.
• Development Ministery, (2018). On Birinci Kalkınma Planı (2019-2023), İşgücü Piyasası ve Genç İstihdamı Özel İhtisas Komisyonu Raporu.
• D'Urso, P. & Massari, R. (2019). Information Sciences, 505, 513-534.
• Ehrenberg, R. G., Smith, R. S., & Hallock, K. F. (2021). Modern labor economics: Theory and public policy. Routledge.
• Furman, J. (2020). Protecting people now, helping the economy rebound later, VoxEU.org, 18 March
• Grane, A., Albarran, I., & Lumely R. (2020). International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 17(7747).
• Hall, R. E. (2003). Modern theory of unemployment fluctuations: Empirics and policy applications. American Economic Review, 93(2), 145-150.
• Huang, Z. (1997). A fast-clustering algorithm to cluster very large categorical datasets in data mining. In Research issues on data mining and knowledge discovery. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, 3(8), (34-39)
• Huang, Z. (1998). Extensions to the k-Means Algorithm for Clustering Large Data Sets with Categorical Values. Data Mining and Knowledge Discovery, vol 2, 283–304. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1009769707641
• ILO (2021). ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work. Seventh edition. Updated estimates and analysis.
• ILO (2021). ILO Monitor: COVID-19 and the world of work. Eighth edition. Updated estimates and analysis
• International Monetary Fund (2021). World Economic Outlook Update, July 2021: Fault LinesWidenintheGlobalRecovery.https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/WEO/Issues/2021/07/27/world-economic-outlook-update-july-2021, (accessed Aug 14, 2021).
• Li, J., Song, Q., Peng, C. & Wu, Y. (2020) COVID-19 Pandemic and Household Liquidity Constraints: Evidence from Micro Data, Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 56(15), 3626-3634, DOI: 10.1080/1540496X.2020.1854721
• Kalenkoski, C. M., & Pabilonia, S. W. (2020). Initial Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Employment and Hours of Self-Employed Coupled and Single Workers by Gender and Parental Status. IZA Discussion Paper, No 13443.
• Kutlar, A., Gülmez, A., & Öncel, A. (2021). The Analysis of the Effect of Covid 19 on Macroeconomic Indicators via MDS and Clustering Methods.
• Moen, P., Pedtke, J. H., & Flood, S. (2020). Disparate disruptions: Intersectional COVID-19 employment effects by age, gender, education, and race/ethnicity. Work, Aging and Retirement, 6 (4), 207-228.
• OECD, (2021), OECD Economic Surveys: Turkey 2021.
• Ozdemir, O. & Demir, I. (2019). International Journal of Sciences: Basic and Applied Research (IJSBAR),48(7), 110-138
• Shehroz S. Khan, & Amir Ahmad, Cluster center initialization algorithm for K-modes clustering, Expert Systems with Applications, 40(18), 2013, 7444-7456,
• Şeker, S. D., Özen, E.N. & Erdoğan, A.E. (2020). Jobs at Risk in Turkey: Identifying the Impact of COVID-19. Social Protection and Jobs Discussion Paper;No. 2004. World Bank, Washington, DC. World Bank. https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/34360 License: CC BY 3.0 IGO. (accessed Sep. 23, 2021).
• Uğurlukol, E., & Tükenmez, N. M. (2019). Middle income trap and Turkey: Ways of getting out. BRAND. Broad Research in Accounting, Negotiation, and Distribution, 10(1), 37-51.
• Wasi, N., Ayudhya, C. D. N., Treeratpituk, P., & Nittayo, C. (2021). Understanding a Less Developed Labor Market through the Lens of Social Security Data, No. 147. Puey Ungphakorn Institute for Economic Research.
• Worldbank (2021a). Gross Domestic Product Growth (GDP) (annual %) – Turkey, https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/NY.GDP.MKTP.KD.ZG?locations=TR, (accessed July 31, 2021).
• Worldbank (2021b). Unemployment, total (% of total labor force) (modeled ILO estimate) - Turkey https://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SL.UEM.TOTL.ZS?locations=TR, (accessed July 27, 2021).
• TUIK (2019). Labor Force Statistics Micro Data Set.
• TUIK (2020). Labor Force Statistics Micro Data Set.
• TUIK(2021). İşgücü İstatistikleri, https://data.tuik.gov.tr/Kategori/GetKategori?p=istihdam-issizlik-ve-ucret-108&dil=1, (accessed July 22, 2021).