A Study of the Wages in the Spanish Energy Sector

Guillermo Ceballos-Santamaría,Francisco Sánchez-Cubo,José Mondéjar-Jiménez,Alejandro García-Pozo

doi:10.3390/en14134023

Guillermo Ceballos-Santamaría, Francisco Sánchez-Cubo

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.3390/en14134023

Copy DOI

Abstract

The role of the energy industry has always been central for one reason or another, being environmentalism the main motive in the last two decades. Therefore, attention and research have been directed in this sense. However, human resources—or human capital—have remained understudied, especially concerning the salaries received. Thus, this study is disruptive as it explored the factors that influence employee remuneration in the energy subsector, using Spain as a case study. For this, the PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling) path modelling methodology was used, executing a traditional PLS analysis, bootstrapping and, finally, IPMA (Importance-Performance Analysis). Solid and significant relationships were found among labour conditions, human capital, market and wages, with the relationships between human capital and wages and between human capital and labour conditions being especially relevant. Besides, through IPMA, a series of considerations was made regarding the individual indicators according to their relative importance and performance. Consequently, this paper significantly contributes to the extant literature by analysing the composition of wages in the energy sector, which might allow taking valuable management decisions. Nevertheless, the main limitation of this study lies in the availability of data for Spain and, specifically, for workers in the energy supplying industries.

Highlights

Energy industries have always played a leading role in the current affairs of countries around the world
Amid the greatest feint of ecological transition made by the European Union, the increase in taxes and the reduction of emissions from energy industries are emerging as two of the main pillars of action for this
The lack of recent studies on the wages of energy industry workers is evident, this approach has previously been used in especially labour-intensive fields, such as the tourism sector [43,44]. This issue generates a gap of knowledge concerning the Energies 2021, 14, 4023 human resources of the energy industry, which this paper aims to cover

Summary

Introduction

Energy industries have always played a leading role in the current affairs of countries around the world. In Western countries but, above all, in Europe, the attention falls on the effects of the European Green Deal on them. Amid the greatest feint of ecological transition made by the European Union, the increase in taxes and the reduction of emissions from energy industries are emerging as two of the main pillars of action for this. Along these lines, the bulk of the scientific literature of the last decades focuses on quantifying their emissions and devising new means to mitigate them. Unlike other sectors, energy industries are especially understudied in terms of human resources

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion