‘Women’s employment shrinks in Turkey amid pandemic’

* Photo: Anadolu Agency (AA)

Click to read the article in Turkish

The Economy Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV) has released the 104th issue of its Employment Monitoring Bulletin.

The bulletin has underlined that employment in the sectors negatively affected by the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is still continuing.

While employment has dropped by 10.3 percent in the accomodation and food sector in a year, this drop has been calculated as 7.4 percent in the sectors of culture, arts, recreation, leisure and sports.

According to the TEPAV Employment Monitoring Bulletin, the number of insured workers increased by 5.3 percent in January and was measured as 21.1 million. The Social Security Institution (SGK) data have shown that the rate of insured wage workers, who constitute 71.4 percent of all insured employees in Turkey, increased by 6.4 percent in this period.

When the changes in the shopkeepers-farmers group are concerned, it is seen that there was a 7.4 percent increase in the number of shopkeepers and a decrease of 5.7 percent in farmers. The rate of increase in the number of those working in the public sector was 1.2 percent.

Sectors affected by the outbreak

The drop in the employment in the sectors negatively affected by the pandemic continued in January. While employment dropped by 10.3 percent in the accomodation and food sector in a year, this rate was 7.4 percent in the sectors of culture, arts, recreation, leisure and sports.

Moreover, there was a shrinkage similar to the one in April-May 2020 in the administrative and social services sector (11.6 percent).

On the other side, in the sector of households' activities as employers, which also covers the domestic services, the rate of shrinkage was 43.2 percent, which has marked the highest figure in that regard.

42 percent increase in social services

In the sectors where there was a recovery in the second half of 2020, there was an increase in employment in January. The rate of increase in employment in agriculture, forestry and fishing industry was 14.2 percent, the increase in manufacturing was 9.2 percent, the increase in construction was 23.6 percent and it was 5.7 percent in wholesale and retail sales.

The related rates have been defined as the highest monthly increase in employment after May 2020. The rate of employment in the human healthcare and social services sector, which has become all the more important during the pandemic, was measured as 42 percent.

Increase in the construction sector

The number of the insured employees of the small and medium sized enterprises increased by 508 thousand.

The highest increase was recorded in the sector of construction of buildings with an increase of 216 thousand people. This sector was followed by the human healthcare services with an increase of 80 thousand, by retail sale with 55 thousand and wholesale with 53 thousand.

Women's employment

There has been a striking shrinkage in the employment of women since November 2020, according to the TEPAV bulletin. The number of insured women employees has increased by 201 thousand when compared to the previous year; however, the rate of women among all insured employees dropped from 31.3 percent in early 2020 to 30.7 percent in January 2021.

The TEPAV has noted that women's employment has dropped amid the restrictive measures taken against the second wave of the pandemic and it has narrowed by nearly 81 thousand in the last four months. (DŞ/SD)