ISKUR Vocational Trainees
Profile, job-search behavior and expectations
June 15th 2011
This note presents the results of a baseline survey of about 5,300 people participating in a study to evaluate the impact of vocational training provided by the Turkish Employment Agency (ISKUR). The study is a joint effort by ISKUR and the World Bank aimed at identifying ways to improve vocational training programs in the context of the rapid expansion of these programs. Evaluation participants are a representative sample of ISKUR trainees in the 23 provinces selected for the study to represent the spectrum of labor market conditions across Turkey. Data was collected between September 2010 and January 2011 before training courses started. This is the most comprehensive information on ISKUR trainees to date.
The note provides a comprehensive analysis of ISKUR trainees in terms of (i) their characteristics and differences relative to the unemployed and jobless population, (ii) their job search behavior, and (iii) their expectation about ISKUR vocational training in terms of improved labor market outcomes.Ultimately, thisnote aims to providepolicy relevant information for the final evaluation of these programs in early 2012 by (1) making an ex-ante assessment of how well ISKUR training is targeted (i.e. whether training is being offered to individuals who could potentially benefit the most from it), and (2) analyzing the extent and nature of the demand for ISKUR vocational training.
The focus of ISKUR trainings on women and youth seems appropriatefrom a policy perspective. ISKUR traineesare mostly women (63%) and young (average age of 27). International evidence shows that training programs are more cost-effective for youth than for adults. Targeting youth is also justified by their sheer numbers in Turkey and their difficult transition into the labor market (60% of the 20-24 year olds with less than secondary education are jobless—defined as not working and not going to school). And women make up 72% of the jobless in Turkey and are significantly less educated than men, justifying the targeting of training programs to women, particularly young women.
ISKUR trainings target well-educated unemployed people, who are not most in need of training. About 74% of ISKUR trainees have at least secondary education, being significantly better educated thaneven the working 20-34 year olds in the population (let alone the jobless). This is a reflection of both the demand for such courses and their supply, as many of these courses are designed for people with medium levels of education, and training providers tend to select individuals with higher levels of education. And yet 52% of the working age population (15-64) in Turkey has less than basic education (lower secondary education), accounting for 64% of the jobless and 65% of informal workers. Even among 20-34 year olds, the proportion with less than high school is 57%, accounting for 53% of the jobless and 54% of the informal in that age group. These disadvantaged segments of the working age population are not being served by ISKUR. And yet activating them, particularly the young, into productive employment is crucial to enhance productive employment in Turkey over the medium term.
ISKUR trainees engage in little job search, although most of those who do tend to use ISKUR employment services. Only about half of ISKUR trainees had been actively searching for a job during the 4 weeks prior to the survey (and before training), with men and more educated people being more active than women and less educated people, respectively. Not surprisingly, the percentage of people looking for a job is significantly smaller in poor provinces (where job opportunities are more limited) than in richer provinces. Although the main channel for job search is family and friends, 74% of trainees searching for a job have used ISKUR services.Access to ISKUR employment services is partly determined by the availability of ISKUR offices across different province. ISKUR services are regarded as the second best channel to find wage employment after applying directly to employers. The percentage of women with a positive view of ISKUR services is higher than the percentage of men, even though women make less use of ISKUR services.
The results on job search behavior point to the need to encourage more job search and expand employment services to makethem front and central to activation efforts.International evidence shows that this low job search activity before providingvocational training is not a cost-effective way to activate the jobless. Job seekers need to be encouraged to look for a job and be assisted in this task through employment services before they get any training. Employment services (job placement, counseling, job search assistance), which are limited in Turkey,should be front and central to activation efforts:employment services are more cost-effective than other activation measures and an effective screening device for identifying individuals who require additional services (e.g. vocational training). For example, in the UK all registered unemployed people are offered minimal employment services (job placement) and required to take individual actions to find a job (the market test) (unemployment benefits and participation in activation programs in conditional on that) before determining whether they need additional employment services and training (the most expensive activation service).
ISKUR trainees attach a great ex-antelabor market value to ISKUR training, even relative to other trainings, particularly among the low educated. Although the actual impact of vocational training will be revealed once data from evaluation participants are collected approximately 1 year after the trainings take place, it is informative to look at the expected impact of trainings (as perceived by trainees before starting the training) and the reasons behind these expectations. About 80% of trainees believe ISKUR training will help them do better in the labor market. The expected impacts after 1 year are very large: relative to no training, ISKUR training is perceived to increase the probability of finding a job by 32 percentage points and increase wages by 39%. Interestingly, trainees with less than secondary education completed, which make up the minority of ISKUR trainees, have higher expectations than trainees with higher education levels. Although this result is based on expectations, it casts some doubt on the appropriateness of focusing ISKUR trainings on people with mid to high levels of education.And the expected impact of ISKUR training is higher than that of other vocational training (13.6 percentage point increase in the probability of finding a job).
The high expected value of ISKUR training is explained by the high perceived quality and relevance of trainings and value attached by employers to ISKUR certificates. About 94% of trainees think ISKUR training improves job-readiness skills. Almost all trainees are confident about the quality of ISKUR training, particularly if provided by public institutions (50% are very confident about their quality). And the quality of ISKUR training is perceived to be higher than the quality of other training. In addition to quality, 92% of trainees value the fact that employers do value the certificate provided by ISKUR. Despite the genuine value attached to ISKUR training, one third of trainees admit that the main reason for taking the training is the stipendprovided to trainees (this proportion decreases with the level of education of the trainee).And the free nature of ISKUR training also matters: two thirds of trainees say they would not pay for other training if not accepted in ISKUR training, being the main reason the lack of savings/cash and limited access to credit.
Although based on expectations and perceptions, these results point to the genuine value attached to ISKUR trainings, which provides a good base on which to build reforms to improve the effectiveness of these programs. The expected impact of ISKUR training on the labor market (both relative to no training and compared to other training) is consistent across age groups, gender, provinces, training courses and previous experience with ISKUR trainings. Although, it is very possible that people overestimate the impact of ISKUR training, they have enough information on the program to make a judgment on whether it leads to better labor market outcomes. Likewise, trainees have better information about ISKUR trainings than other trainings so they may tend to overestimate the relative quality of ISKUR training. By the same token, however, their perceptions about the quality, relevance and employers’ value of ISKUR training need to reflect point to the genuine value-added of ISKUR training. The actual evaluation of ISKUR training to be conducted in early 2012 will provide the evidence on their labor market impact and how it differs for difference groups of trainees and training providers.
The rest of this note is organized as follows. Section 1 puts this note into context and provides a quick description of the sample and the data. Section 2 provides a profile of ISKUR trainees and compares this profile to other groups in the labor force. Section 3 looks at the job search behavior of ISKUR trainees. Section 4 looks at the expectations and perceptions about ISKUR trainings.
- Introduction
Despite a strong performance after the crisis, the Turkish labor market continues to be characterized by low activity rates and low labor productivity, constraining Turkey’s high growth potential. Less than half of the working-age population (15-64) (WAP) are working (less than a quarter of working-age women), while unemployment has remained above 10%.Job informality (defined as jobs without social security benefits) has come down remarkably but it still affects 41% of workers, contributing to the low labor productivity in Turkey relative to competitors.Low activity rates and labor productivity constrain Turkey’s high growth potential: Differences in labor productivity account for 80% of the Turkey-EU15 GDP per capita gap, while 18% of the gap is due to differences in labor force participation rates.
Figure 1: Few people working and their productivity is low
Less than half of people are working / Labor productivity(relative to the US): increasing but remains lowSource: Labor Force Survey: Seasonally-adjusted monthly data; population 15+. Labor productivity: OECD.
Raising activity rates and productivity is a long term challenge, but decisive policy action today is essential to take advantage of the closing demographic window.Urbanization, agricultural shedding and the increasing WAP until 2020 will continue to increase the number of people (mainly youth and low skill workers) looking for non-agricultural jobs, making it harder to reduce unemployment and informality in the non-agricultural sector and to increase female labor force participation. And as agricultural shedding and urbanization slow down, more women will join the non-agriculture labor force.
Skills upgrading of the labor force is central to enhancing productive employment in Turkey. Skills are best acquired the first time around and reforms to improve skills while in school are most cost-effective. However, the impact of these reforms will materialize in the long run and Turkish growth potential is currently impinged by the large share of the working-age population(WAP) (15-64) that do not have the basic skills to find a job or to get out of informal/low productivity jobs: 52% of the WAP has less than basic education (lower secondary education), accounting for 64% of the jobless and 65% of the informal.
The expansion and improvement ISKUR vocational training since 2008 have been instrumental to the government employment reform agenda. The 2008 labor package reduced employers’ social security contributions and other non-financial labor costs, and allowed all registered unemployed to benefit from Active Labor Market Programs (ALMP). The coverage of ALMP has expanded significantly since 2009 (mainly vocational training) (the number of beneficiaries is expected to be around 400,000 in 2011, from just over 17,000 in 2006), and a number of reforms to improve the quality and relevance of vocational training have been introduced, including the development of a national qualifications framework for vocational education and training (ongoing), the introduction in 2010 of quality criteria in the selection of training providers and the launch of the UMEM project, which will provide quality vocational training in technical schools and internships at Union of Chambers and Commodity Exchanges of Turkey (TOBB) businesses. A comprehensive Employment Strategy (ES) has been drafted, including measures to improve labor market flexibility, worker protection and the link between vocational education and jobs. It is expected that the new ES will include a number of measures to increase the coverage the ALMP and improve their effectiveness.
This note presents the results of a baseline survey of about 5,300 people participating in a study to evaluate the impact of vocational training provided by the Turkish Employment Agency (ISKUR). The study is a joint effort by ISKUR and the World Bank aimed at identifying ways to improve vocational training programs in the context of the rapid expansion of these programs in Turkey. In particular the study is designed to answer the following questions: (1) What is the average impact of ISKUR training on the labor market (as measured by the likelihood and quality of employment)? (2) Which trainees benefit the most from training (in terms of gender, age, level of education and skills, work experience etc.)? (3) What are mechanisms/processes through which training affects labor market outcomes (e.g. improved skills, reduced search costs etc.) What provider characteristics make training most effective?
The evaluation sample.The sample of evaluation participants includes approximately equal numbers of individuals that were randomly selected into taking vocational training (treatment group) and individuals that were randomly selected out of training (control group). This experimental design required focusing the evaluation on training courses that were sufficiently oversubscribed (i.e. the number of people eligible and interested in these courses is at least twice the number of training spaces available). Evaluation participants went through the standard selection process for ISKUR training until the final randomization: they were (i) eligible for and interested in training and (ii) selected by the training providers among a larger pool of eligible applicants. The data was collected between September 2010 and January 2011 before the training started. A such, evaluation participants are a representative sample of ISKUR trainees in the 23 provinces selected for the study to represent the spectrum of labor market conditions across Turkey (from an initial sample of 39 provinces with at least two oversubscribed courses in 2009) and the selected (oversubscribed) courses (130).Baseline data was collected from 5,318 out of 5,700 evaluation participants.
The randomization of evaluation participants into treatment and control groups was successful, which validates the impact evaluation strategy. The Annex 1 shows that, across many different characteristics, there are no statistically significant differences between the treatment and control groups. This validates the evaluation strategy that will compare the labor market outcomes of treatment and control groups and attribute the difference to ISKUR training and ISKUR training only. This evaluation will mainly draw from a follow survey of evaluation participants approximately one after the trainings have been completed (early 2012). The final evaluation report will be available by June 2012. This is the first rigorous impact evaluation of a large-scale publicly provided training program in a middle income country context. Further details on the design and implementation of the impact evaluation study are available in a companion note.
Figure 2: Evaluation sample (baseline survey)
Selected provinces for the evaluation / Regional distribution of evaluation sampleEvaluation courses
- Who is taking ISKUR trainings? A Profileof ISKUR Trainees
Most ISKUR traineesare women and young. About61% of individuals in the evaluation sample are females. This is partly explained by the courses offered:Out of the 130 courses in the evaluation, 12 courses only have female trainees (babysitting, weaving, hair care, and sewing machine operator) and 17 courses have no female trainees (applied basic electronics, welders, plumber, furniture manufacture, natural gas fitter, and forklift operator). But women also make the majority of trainees in a wide range of other courses, including computerized accounting, computer manager, foreign trade and customs professional, computer-aided design, computer network design, salesperson, and web designer. For example, in accounting professionals and computerized courses women account for 72%, 77% in Cashier/Clerk/Bookkeeping and 90% in medical secretary or apparel related occupations (e.g. stylist). The average ageamongISKUR is 27 and 60% are aged 20-29. Men tend to be a bit younger than women (26versus 28). There is some variation in age across courses,with the average age being lower in occupations were women are more dominant.Because of their youth, only 12% of trainees are household heads and 34% are married.