Regional Analysis of Skills-Mismatch in Turkish Labor Markets
Ömer ŞahinThe difference between the skills and the skills needed in the labor market is called skill mismatch. The literature reveals this skills mismatch problem as an over-education and over-qualification problem in Turkish labor markets. For enterprises, the two hardest employees to find are unqualified workers and workers with vocational training, both bluecollar (VGM,2018). This finding also is supported by high higher-education unemployment (TURKSTAT, 2020). However, earlier studies do not make clear if different regions suffer from these problems uniformly. This study aims to reveal the differences between NUTS-2 regions in suffering from the over-education and over-qualification problem. It extensively uses the Sectoral and Regional Mapping of Productivity and Development in Turkey project, SEGE 2017 report to acquire the development levels of NUTS-2 regions and TURKSTAT’s employment statistics by education and NUTS-2 region. Two crucial findings of this paper are that only the illiterate labor force satisfies enterprises’ unqualified labor need and that while less developed regions suffer severely from the over-education and over-qualification problem, more developed regions only suffer from lack of workers with vocational training. This paper will first analyze the current situation in Turkish Labor Markets, followed by the presentation and analysis of data it uses. In the end, these results will be discussed, and policies to improve the situation will be suggested.
