Analysis of basic employment distribution in Turkey using location quotient technique and spatial statistics at the county level

Geographical distribution of basic employment is an invaluable source of data for planners. The location choice by sectors is of extreme importance for the development and quality of urbanization. With a view to analyzing this location choice, various spatial digital methods have been developed and used widely. One of the most frequently used techniques for identifying the basic sectors and deriving the share of basic employment in each sector is Location Quotient (LQ) Analysis. In Turkey, many studies have been carried out with different purposes by using the location quotient; however, none has produced that define the sectoral basic employment structure of Turkey on county scale. Nevertheless, an approach on county scale appears as a more proper geographical unit in such an analysis due to sectoral diversity on provincial scale. This research aims at analyzing the geographical distribution of basic employment for each sector derived by LQ using GIS and spatial statistics. Obtaining basic employment sizes have been carried out on county scale in the study using location quotient method and the basic employment distribution on county scale have been examined using spatial statistical methods using the sectoral classes in NACE Rev. 1.1 of the TUIK . Within this scope, data for 922 counties, the sectoral employment data of which have been available, at the classification level are used for deriving various spatial statistics for each sector including: the basic employment distribution, mean center, weighted mean center, standard deviation ellipse, average nearest neighbour distance and Anselin Local Moran?s I statistics that examine the similarities of counties with the surrounding counties.