The Impact of Syrian Refugees on the Turkish Labor Market

Abstract

The civil war in Syria has destabilized the whole Middle East along with neighboring regions. In this respect, the impact of Syrian refugees on Turkish labor market is one of the most important contemporary issues discussed in Turkey. This issue has both political and economic significance. Deriving from this point, the aim of this study is to research the empirical relationship between the Labor Market Indicator (LMI) and the growing number of Syrian Refugees in Turkey (RS) by using time series analysis. The data employs monthly data for the period from January 2012 to August 2017. Results of the ARDL bounds test suggest that the Labor Market Indicator and the number of Syrian Refugees are in a long-run relationship. The Gregory-Hansen cointegration test with a structural break confirms the robustness of the ARDL bounds test of cointegration. The Kalman filtering approach was designed to investigate the dynamic relationship between the Labor Market Indicators and the growing number of Syrian Refugees. The results show that the increase in the number of Syrian refugees negatively affects the Labor Market Indicator in Turkey, which implies that the inflow of Syrians has negative effects on labor market outcomes such as employment and unemployment in the country. These results also confirm the postulation of general labor migration theory, which holds that an influx of refugees negatively affects labor market outcomes in the harboring country.