The effects of covid -19 pandemic on employment of older workers

Abstract

Turkey is one of the many countries where the Covid-19 outbreak burst. The Covid-19 pandemic has deeply affected human life in many aspects, including the economy, in the whole world. One of the most affected groups by the pandemic has been the older population due to both health-related concerns and the difficulties of transitioning to the remote working system brought by the pandemic. In this thesis, I analyze the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on the employment of older workers, using the Turkish Statistical Institute's Labor Force Statistics Micro Data Set for the years 2014 and 2021. In this study, I examine the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on employment through the retirement, quit, and dismissal variables. The retirement and quit variables represent the labor supply, and the dismissal variable represents the labor demand. While the findings of this study show that the Covid-19 pandemic decreased the employment rate of females and males in 2020, it suggests evidence that this decrease is higher for women than men. I also find evidence suggesting that Covid-19 has heterogeneous effects on employment by education levels and the sector in which the individual works, as well as gender.