Other provinces in the same position as İstanbul are Bilecik, Edirne and Antalya. Commenting on the results of the study, Professor Hüseyin Tatlıdil from Hacettepe University, who was in charge of the study, said İstanbul, Bilecik, Edirne and Antalya owed their success in minimizing unemployment to relatively higher numbers of businesses from the service and agriculture industries.
“These two sectors, which sustained relatively fewer losses during the global financial crisis, helped minimize skyrocketing unemployment.” Recalling that the highest employment losses were experienced in the manufacturing industry, he said the service and agriculture sectors were able to compensate for a steep decline in employment to some extent.
The northwestern provinces of Bartın and Kastamonu and the southeastern province of Muş shared the highest risk of unemployment in Turkey, the research showed. Tatlıdil said the high risk of unemployment in these three provinces resulted from a relatively higher number of small production facilities. “These small businesses in Bartın, Kastamonu and Muş suffered heavy stagnation during the crisis, and many of them shut their doors. This led to the dismissal of employees.” Tatlıdil said medium and large-sized companies managed to keep their head above water amidst the crisis, while few smaller businesses were quite as lucky.
An interesting find of the study was that provinces in Turkey’s southeastern region, which is known for relatively poorer business conditions, were in the middle of the list of provinces with the highest risk of unemployment. “This is mainly because job applications to İŞKUR are very low in these places. Considering the low chances of finding a job in this region, an unemployed person in Siirt, for instance, dares not to apply to İŞKUR but rather goes to İŞKUR offices in bigger cities such as İstanbul, İzmir or Ankara,” Tatlıdil explained.
The study took data from İŞKUR and the Social Security Institution (SGK) between January 2008 and January 2009. When assessing the risk rates, the research used parameters such as long-term unemployment, unemployment amongst youth, unemployment amongst people with lower education levels and the number of applications for severance payments. Tatlıdil said they refrained from using other data as “Turkey lacks enough research to yield healthy figures on it.”
