ABSTRACT

The Turkish labour market has undergone remarkable changes in the last two decades. An important development is the rising number of university graduates: The aim of this study is to explore whether the Turkish economy has undergone sufficient technological progress to favour more skilled workers, by analysing the effects of skill mismatch on wages in the Turkish labour market. Using three recent Labour Force Surveys from 2014 to 2016, we show that a significant proportion of university graduates are overeducated for their jobs. This descriptive finding in itself would not necessarily indicate a fundamental education-specific mismatch problem, but a transition in labour markets following rapid structural shifts in a developing economy. However, our findings also show that the most suitable jobs for university graduates may not require specialization in any field of study in Turkey. Both findings imply that supply and demand for skilled workers may be in short-term disequilibrium leading to surpluses in different skills in Turkish labour markets consistent with the recent evidence for constant relative real wages for skilled workers.

摘要

在过去的二十年里，土耳其劳动力市场发生了显着的变化。一个重要的发展是大学毕业生人数的增加：本研究的目的是通过分析技能不匹配对土耳其劳动力市场工资的影响，探索土耳其经济是否经历了足够的技术进步来支持更多的技术工人。我们使用最近 2014 年至 2016 年的三项劳动力调查显示，很大一部分大学毕业生因工作而接受了过度教育。这一描述性发现本身并不一定表明存在基本的教育特定的不匹配问题，而是在发展中经济体的快速结构转变之后劳动力市场的转型。然而，我们的调查结果还表明，最适合大学毕业生的工作可能不需要在土耳其的任何研究领域进行专业化。这两项研究结果都表明，技术工人的供求可能处于短期不平衡状态，导致土耳其劳动力市场不同技能的过剩，这与最近技术工人相对实际工资不变的证据一致。