The effects of industry 4.0 on the labor market: Labor and wage polarization trends in Turkey

The world is currently in an industrial revolution process which is called Industry 4.0. Many nations and companies, especially developed countries, utilize modern technology brought by the new transformation. As in other industrial revolutions, technological changes brought by Industry 4.0 have significant impacts on societies. Within this contex rapid developments in technology affects and transforms the labor markets worldwide. In this study the negative and positive effects of the new industrial revolution on the labor markets are examined. Besides, labor and wage polarization which is one of this effects has been analyzed particularly Turkey. By using this analysis and applying TurkStat Household Labor Force Survey microdata for period, 2012-2018, it is observed that the labor market in Turkey has similar polarization the industrialized countries. The observed polarization of the labor market and wages in Turkey, are seen the result of skill-biased technological changes which are mentioned in the literature. In addition, due to the lack of task-level datas, observed employment and wage trends in our country were examined only through ISCO-08 professions.