Job Insecurity during the COVID-19 Pandemic in Spain: Urban-Rural Differences

Abstract

In a period in which COVID-19 began to spread quickly around the world, and the WHO had just declared a public health emergency of international concern, we examine the impact of these circumstances on perceived job insecurity in Spain. We analyse the role of labor status and place of residence (urban/rural) on these job perceptions. To this end, we conducted a large-scale survey in Spain just before and after the nationwide lockdown was implemented on March 14, 2020, and a law with extraordinary urgent measures to address the economic, labour, and social impact was passed on March 17, 2020 (ERTE in Spanish). Our main results show that rural areas are most sensitive in terms of feelings of job insecurity. In particular, we find that for some groups living in rural areas is related to lower perceived job insecurity. Besides, we observe that, among the non-working population, the feeling of job insecurity reacts more to the implementation of the lockdown and ERTE, with offsetting effects.