Spanish Labour Market Research Articles

All precarious? Institutional change and turning points in labour market trajectories in Spain

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to explore the effects of changes in employment regulation in Spain on individual labour market trajectories. It is well known that the Spanish labour market has been strongly hit by the 2007 recession. Furthermore, after 2010 and in the benchmark of “austerity”, several reforms were implemented to further flexibilise employment regulation. At the same time, public sector budgets suffered severe cutbacks, that impacted working conditions and prospects of public sector workers. These reforms were implemented by different governments and substantially changed previous existing patterns of employment. This paper explains how these reforms have reinforced previous existing trends towards greater flexibility and weaker employment protection and how they lead to a shift in the position of work in society.Design/methodology/approachThe emerging patterns that these changes provoked are illustrated thorough data from narrative biographies of workers affected by a job loss or a downgrading of working conditions. The workers of the sample had relatively stable positions and careers and were affected by changes that substantially modified their paths.FindingsThe paper shows how reforms have expanded work and employment insecurities and have broken career paths. It demonstrates how the reforms have weakened the position of work and organised labour in society and how, when institutional supports are jeopardised, the capacity to plan and act is harassed by the traditional social inequalities.Originality/valueThe paper enhances the knowledge about the impact of institutional changes by analysing their effects in individual working lives by means of narrative biographies.

Changing the way we understand precarious employment and health: Precarisation affects the entire salaried population

Employment precariousness (EP) has expanded over recent years. The aim of this study is to test the existence of a general precarisation of the Spanish labour market and its association with mental health for different types of contract.On the subsample of salaried workers from the second Psychosocial Work Environment Survey and using the revised Employment Precariousness Scale (EPRES-2010), we calculated the prevalence of EP and poor mental health for salaried workers. We created six groups of workers according to their levels of EP and types of contract. We used Poisson regressions, stratified by gender, to examine associations between belonging to the different groups of workers and poor mental health.Although temporary workers had a higher prevalence of EP and poorer mental health than permanent workers, we found that the association with poor mental health was unexpectedly stronger in permanent workers with high precariousness (2.97, IC95% 2.25–3.92 in men and 2.50, 1.70–3.67 in women) than in temporary workers (2.17, IC95% 1.59–2.96 in men and 1.81, 1.17–2.78 in women). A gradient of poor mental health existed by EP score for both men and women and permanent and temporary workers.The Spanish labour market is highly affected by employment precarisation. Using the multidimensional EPRES is more informative and a better tool for mental health research than type of contract alone. Creating a surveillance system to monitor the magnitude and evolution of EP has to be a priority in order to reduce health inequalities and to evaluate the impact of policies and programs.

Immigrants’ educational mismatch and the penalty of over-education

ABSTRACTThis paper analyses immigrants’ educational mismatch and its impact on wages in Spain. The incidence of immigrants’ education–occupation mismatch in the Spanish labour market can largely be explained by the mismatch in the last job held in the home country. The probability of having been over-educated in the home country has a higher effect on the probability of being over-educated in the first job in Spain. Those who were over-educated in their first job are more likely to continue being over-educated in their current job in Spain. Finally, over-educated immigrants earn significantly lower wages compared to their non-over-educated counterparts.

¿Quién se empareja con quién en el mercado laboral español? Un análisis cluster basado en la Muestra Continua de Vidas Laborales

Our study addresses empirical tools that are useful to capture the role of heterogeneities in the labor matching process. We develop an application of our methodology to the Spanish labor market based on the data from the Muestra Continua de Vidas Laborales (Continuous Sample of Working Lives). These data contain information about the worker and the job that form each job placement, which allows us to group in worker and job segments on the basis of their characteristics. These segments can be also grouped respectively in worker and job clusters, which finally can be combined among them attending to their matching. Those joint clusters (or biclusters) with the highest propensity to match can be considered specific “job creation” markets, whose structure can be studied in detail —for example, analyzing the employment duration—. Our empirical methodology, which can be very versatile in its application (of which we provide several examples), allows showing the important labor market segmentation, and it can be useful for the efficient design of active employment policies, for instance of labor mobility.

The Perfect Storm: Graduating in a Recession in a Segmented Labor Market

This paper analyzes the effects of entry labor-market conditions on workers' career in Spain, a country well known for its highly segmented labor market and rigid labor-market institutions. In contrast with more flexible labor markets, we find that the annual earnings losses of individuals without a university degree are greater and more persistent than those of college graduates. For workers without a college degree, the effect is driven by a lower likelihood of employment. For college graduates, the negative impact on earnings is driven by both a higher probability of non-employment, and employment in jobs with fixed-term contracts. While a negative shock increases mobility of college graduates across firms and industries, there is no earnings recovery, just secondary labor-market job churning. Our results are consistent with tight regulations of the Spanish labor market such as binding minimum wages and downward wage rigidity caused by collective bargaining agreements.

Subsidising Mature Age Employment or Throwing Coins into a Wishing Well: A Quasi-Experimental Analysis

This paper evaluates the effect that subsidies to employment maintenance have on the probability of mature age workers staying in the firm. Implementing a quasi-experimental design provided by changes in Spanish labour market regulations, we are able to estimate that subsidy removal had a small though significant impact on the workers’ firm attachment rate. Our results show that a 1 pp increase in the worker’s cost translates into a 0.11 pp increase in the cumulative probability of the worker separating from the firm in the next five months. This effect was mainly driven by workers with relatively less seniority in the firm, who present lower dismissal costs, and by workers in low-skill jobs, for which the wage productivity gap seems to negatively evolve with age. In terms of cost-benefit analysis, we document that the previous higher rate of job maintenance was achieved at a disproportionate cost, and therefore the elimination of the subsidy resulted in Social Security efficiency gains.

Crisis de oportunidad para los jóvenes con escasos estudios en España (2005-2014)

La estructura educativa de la población joven en España es única en comparación con otros países de nuestro entorno. Ésta se caracteriza por la polarización del nivel de formación de sus jóvenes. España es el único país de la OCDE con altas tasas, tanto de jóvenes con educación superior, como de jóvenes con un nivel educativo bajo. Nos interrogamos sobre las condiciones educativas y laborales de este colectivo de jóvenes sin estudios obligatorios completados, muy castigados por el contexto de crisis económica. Precariedad, temporalidad, contratos de formación o prácticas, contratos a tiempo parcial se están cronificando en el mercado laboral español, y se están convirtiendo en una norma informal de acceso al empleo y de precarización prolongada del mismo; en parte, a consecuencia de los cambios en las políticas educativas que limitan sus oportunidades de promoción o mejora. Se pretende conocer, a través de los datos de la Encuesta de Población Activa, la situación sociolaboral de los jóvenes con escasos estudios, en un período sumamente convulso: entre el final del boom económico y la crisis económica en España. Y tratamos de interrogarnos hasta qué punto ambas coyunturas socioeconómicas han roto con la igualdad de oportunidades, propiciando la construcción de una sociedad dualizada, desde un punto de vista educativo y laboral.Palabras-clave: Jóvenes con escasos estudios; Desigualdad de oportunidades; Mercado laboral. ABSTRACTThe educational structure of the young population in Spain is unique compared to other neighbouring countries. It is characterized by the polarization of the levels of education of its young people. Spain is the only country in the OECD with the highest rates of young people with both higher education and low education level. We are considering the educational and working conditions of this part of our society who haven’t finished compulsory education and are really punished by the context of the economic crisis. Precariousness, temporality, training contracts or internship and part-time contracts are a constant in the Spanish labour market. They are becoming an informal norm of access to jobs and also a way of prolonged instability about employment. All this is partly due to changes in the educational policies that limit young people’s opportunities for promotion or improvement. This article intends to gain insight into the social and occupational situation of young people with low educational attainment in Spain. In order to do so, the Spanish Labour Force Survey will be used, analyzing the period of time ranging from the end of the economic boom from the beginning of the century to the current economic crisis. The research question focuses on the effect of both economic scenarios in the equality of opportunities and to what extent a dual society has emerged both in the educational and occupational realms.Keywords: Young people with low educational attainment; Inequality of opportunities; Labor market

Effects of Employment and Social Protection Reformsin Spain: a jurisprudential perspective

Abstract: This paper analyzes the consequences of the process of labor reforms on the Spanish labor market. Specifically, it is deepened in the interpretation of the social courts of the reforms related to employment and social protection. Therefore, the main legal measures during times of crisis are studied, which have introduced an important space to labour flexicurity. Highlighting the changes related to internal flexibility and external that have been interpreted and sometimes corrected by social jurisprudence. Keywords: labour reforms, Spanish labor market, social jurisprudence, labour flexicurity, internal flexibility, external flexibility. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.20318/sllerj.2016.3309

Labour market segmentation in Spain: is legislation leading to a reduction in duality?

Abstract: In the last decades, the Spanish legislature has expressed its concern regarding thenegative impact of the existing duality in its national labour market. Many of the employment Actsadopted in the last few years specifically mention this problem in their preambles.In order to analyse the effectiveness of the measures adopted about this question it is necessary tohighlight the two different ways to approach the problem of duality. On the one hand, the existing dualitycould be reduced by making the access to temporary contacts of employment harder (reducing thenumber and the possibilities of temporary contracts and increasing the labour cost of these contracts) Onthe other hand, protection to open-ended contracts could be loosened so that differences of protection inboth kind of contracts would be shortened. For some years the focus was on reducing hiring flexibility.Since the economic crisis of 2008, and in accordance with the recommendations of the European Council,initiatives to combat the duality of the Spanish labour market have affected firing flexibility. Thispaper studies the effectiveness and consequences of those policies. Keywords: duality and segmentation, hiring flexibility, firing flexibility, labour law reforms. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.20318/sllerj.2016.3308

Bubble economics and structural change: the cases of Spain and France compared

This paper delves into the recent events that led to the formation of the housing bubble in Spain and the resulting structural change that is arguably needed to put the economy back into the right track. For this purpose, we calibrate a model with different equilibria descriptive of the labor markets in Spain and France, where the unemployment rates went from the same initial spot to very different levels. In addition to this, we run a counterfactual analysis that throws some more light on the performance of the Spanish labor market and the housing bubble. Our results suggest that the unemployment rate in Spain has jumped to much higher levels while switching between equilibria or, what is the same, because of structural change. Moreover, our counterfactuals indicate that, first, there has been an important misdirection of resources into the construction industry mainly fueled by excessively low real interest rates and, second, the Spanish labor reform has fallen short of its own goals.

Risk aversion and inequity aversion in demand for unemployment benefits

This paper is an empirical study of what motivates net contributors to support redistributive policies. While studies in the area have tended to consider broad measures of inequality and support for redistribution in general, we focus on a single, salient relationship between local unemployment rates and demand for spending on unemployment benefits. Using a particularity of the Spanish labour market, we estimate how workers’ stated preferences for unemployment benefits spending respond to changes in the local unemployment rate. We then decompose this response into the part explained by risk aversion, and thus demand for insurance, and the part explained by inequity aversion. Our results suggest that increases in local unemployment rates lead to increased demand by workers for unemployment benefits spending. Moreover, our results are consistent with an insurance motive driving this relationship but provide little support for inequity aversion. Our results suggest that studies of the relationship between inequality and demand for redistribution might benefit from considering both the source and measure of the inequality and the instrument of redistribution.

Multiplex Migration and Aspects of Precarization: Swedish Retirement Migrants to Spain and their Service Providers

Exploring the relations between different migrants who meet in Spain, this article discusses issues of mobility, the globalization of care and service work, and precarization of labor and livelihoods, of crucial importance to welfare states and the future of work and retirement conditions in Europe. A mélange of migratory processes are scrutinized along a Swedish-Spanish North-South axis. It analyzes longstanding conditions on the Spanish labor market combined with neoliberal de- and reregulation of work and welfare with a bearing on spatial and social inequalities across the European Union. From a relational approach, the authors examine conditions of Swedish retirement migrants in Spain and of the workers and entrepreneurs who provide care and services for them. Social networks, intermediaries and subcontractors are crucial to organization of migration as well as work and services. Some of these workers, especially third country migrants, occupy precarious, and sometimes informalized, low skilled jobs in an ethnically segmented and gendered labor market.

Employment instability and economic crisis in Spain: what are the elements that make a difference in the trajectories of younger adults?

ABSTRACTThe article analyses the factors that have had a differential effect on the labour trajectories of individuals up to 40 years old during the economic and employment crisis in Spain. To this end, the study specifically examines labour trajectories in the period 2007–2011 using data from a longitudinal panel for Catalonia. First, it uses cluster analysis to classify the types of labour trajectory that were developed by the population aged under 40. Second, it uses a multinomial logit model to distinguish the individual, sectoral and familial characteristics influencing the development of a particular trajectory. The results show the importance of traditional lines of segmentation of the Spanish labour market, such as age and gender. However, they also highlight the importance of variables associated to social background (parents’ educational level and occupation). It is concluded that the factors linked to the different types of labour trajectories are similar to those identified in the literature for previous periods, although the role of family background seems to be more important than in the past, especially in trajectories marked by temporary employment.

The Great Recession and the Immigrant–Native Gap in Job Loss in the Spanish Labour Market

The Great Recession and the Immigrant–Native Gap in Job Loss in the Spanish Labour Market

Is Income Redistribution a Form of Insurance, a Public Good or Both?

This paper is an empirical study of what motivates net contributors to support redis- tributive policies. While studies in the area have tended to consider broad measures of inequality and support for redistribution, we focus on a single, salient relationship between local unemployment rates and demand for spending on unemployment benefits. Using a particularity of the Spanish labour market we estimate how workers? stated preferences for unemployment benefits spending respond to changes in the local unemployment rate. We then decompose this response into the part explained by risk aversion, and thus demand for insurance, and the part explained by the public good nature of the redistribution. Our results suggest that increases in local unemployment rates lead to increased demand by workers for unemployment benefits spending. Moreover, our results are consistent with an insurance motive driving this relationship but provide little support for any public good component. Our results suggest that studies of the relationship between inequality and demand for redistribution might benefit from considering both the source and measure of the inequality and the instrument of redistribution.

Has the Spanish economic crisis affected the duration of sickness absence episodes?

The global economic crisis has had particularly intense effects on the Spanish labor market. We investigated whether the duration of non-work related sickness absence (SA) episodes in salaried workers had experienced any changes before and after the crisis started. This was a repeated cross-sectional analysis conducted in a dynamic cohort in 2006 and 2010. Database was provided by eight mutual insurance companies, covering 983,108 workers and 451,801 SA episodes. Descriptive analysis and crude, bivariate and multivariate analyses using Cox proportional hazards modeling were performed, to quantify the changes in duration of SA episodes between 2006 and 2010, stratified by sex. There was a higher number of episodes in 2010 for both sexes, but especially for women. Unadjusted median duration in men was similar for both years, while for women it was shorter in 2010. Final multivariate models show a greater risk of longer episode duration for men in 2010 (HR 0.95; 95% CI, 0.95–0.95), but a shorter one for women (HR 1.07; 95% CI, 1.07–1.07). Once the economic crisis started affecting the Spanish labor market, the number of SA episodes in women equalized with those in men. There was a decrease of episodes in the youngest age groups, in the construction and in temporary contracts. The relative ranking of leading diagnoses was similar in both years with an increase in infectious, nervous system and respiratory diseases and in mental disorder episodes for both sexes, but especially for women. The risk of longer episode duration was greater in 2010 among men, but smaller in women.

Skills Heterogeneity Among Graduate Workers: Real and Apparent Overeducation in the Spanish Labor Market

This paper takes account of skills heterogeneity among workers with a higher education degree and proposes a new measure to differentiate between real and apparent overeducation based on the level of cognitive skills actually achieved by the individuals. This proposal is applied to the study of the wage effects of overeducation in the Spanish labor market using data from PIAAC. The results suggest that between a quarter and a half of the graduate workers who appear to be overeducated in the Spanish labor market could be considered as being only apparently overeducated since they show a lower level of skills than that corresponding to their educational level or, alternatively, a level of cognitive skills which is commensurate with their job. Different returns are found for each group of overeducated individuals both when compared with adequately educated peers within a similar level of education (with greater wage penalties for apparently overeducated workers) and when the comparison is done with well-matched co-workers doing a similar job (with a wage premium for real overeducation but no significant returns for apparently overeducated workers). These different returns by skill levels beyond what overeducation measures implies that the market distinguishes between education and skills and that educational attainment per se does not perfectly align with acquired skills, meaning that traditional measures of overeducation would overstate the actual level of skills mismatch in the labor market.

Aggregate matching in Spain. Time series analysis using cointegration techniques

I analyze the matching process in the Spanish labor market from 1994-2005. I use monthly registered unemployment data and refer solely to public employment intermediation. This period reflects an upward movement along a downward sloping Beveridge curve; therefore, major changes in the process efficiency should not be observed. I narrow the considerations to a job queuing model, which is the most relevant description of the labor market matching process in Spain, according to the literature. I apply various quantitative methods to address the problem of non-stationary data. The EngleGranger estimates emphasize the crucial role of the demand in generating the outflows from unemployment to employment. The ECT coefficient confirms that the model efficiently approaches the new equilibrium. These findings confirm that job seekers find themselves on the disadvantaged side of the market and compete for scarce job offers, which, in turn, are ascribed randomly to the workers. The diagnostic tests of the VAR models question the relevance of a multivariate space analysis because the outflow from unemployment to employment appears to be the sole endogenous variable.

Gender segregation and earnings differences in the Spanish labour market

ABSTRACTThis article analyses the effects of different types of gender segregation on the gender wage differential for the Spanish labour market. Matched employer–employee data from a sample of 226,535 workers are used. These workers are employed in 61 occupations within 26,492 establishments in 51 different industries. Workers belonging to the same industry, establishment or job share common factors which cannot be observed and these factors affect wages. If these unobservable variables are correlated with the explanatory variables, their estimated effects will be biased. For this reason, we estimate the effects of each type of gender segregation on the wage gap using a robust specification to these possible correlations. We obtain that industrial segregation by gender explains a lower part of the wage gap between men and women than previous researches found using standard regressions, while the contributions of establishment segregation and occupational segregation within each establishment are greater.

The Spanish legislative framework for hiring in country of origin and International Cooperation with Third Countries in the Context of the European Union’s Migration Policy

The influx of immigrants from third countries in search of new opportunities in Spain makes it necessary for these flows to be regulated, in the exercise of state competence and in compliance with, and in respect of, European Union migration policy. Rational management of migration flows inevitably involves revising Spain’s foreign relations by strengthening international dialogue and concluding bilateral agreements with third countries. This study aims to analyse one of the main ways to access the Spanish labour market, namely the “collective management of hiring in country of origin”, as well as international cooperation between Spain and non-EU countries in the regulation and management of migration flows. Furthermore, Mobility Partnerships, a cooperation mechanism instigated by the European Union, are examined, with particular consideration given to the management of migration flows and labour migration from third countries. Those negotiated with Cape Verde and Morocco are of singular importance to Spain.