Non-Working Workers. The Spanish Labour Market under Covid-19

  1. JOSÉ IGNACIO GARCÍA-PEREZ 1
  2. ANTONIO VILLAR 1
  1. 1 Universidad Pablo de Olavide
    info

    Universidad Pablo de Olavide

    Sevilla, España

    ROR https://ror.org/02z749649

Revue:
Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics

ISSN: 0210-1173

Année de publication: 2024

Número: 248

Pages: 53-72

Type: Article

DOI: 10.7866/HPE-RPE.24.1.3 DIALNET GOOGLE SCHOLAR lock_openAccès ouvert editor

D'autres publications dans: Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics

Résumé

We propose in this paper a way of analyzing the evolution of unemployment that considers, besides conventional unemployment rates, unemployment duration, discouraged workers and workers with suspended jobs. Those variables are combined into a synthetic index of non-employment that can be expressed as the product of two components, incidence and severity. We apply this methodology to analyse the evolution of the Spanish labour market during one year with Covid-19. The data show that the behaviour of the job market has been very asymmetric by regions and types of workers. We find that not only incidence and severity are quite heterogeneous across regions and worker types, but also that the evolution between 2019 and 2020 has been different from that corresponding to the financial crisis, with high unemployment regions and older workers suffering less, in terms of incidence and severity.

Références bibliographiques

  • Bentolila, S., García Pérez, J. I. and Jansen, M. (2017), “Are the Spanish long-term unemployed unemployable?”, SERIEs, 8: 1-41.
  • Chakravarty, S. R. (2009), Inequality, polarization, and poverty. Advances in distributional analysis, Springer, New York.
  • De Fraja, G., Lemos, S. and Rockey, J. (2017), “The wounds that do not heal. The life-time scar of youth unemployment”, C. E. P. R. Discussion Papers, 11852.
  • Gangi, M. (2006), “Scar Effects of Unemployment: An Assessment of Institutional Complementarities”, American Sociological Review, 71: 986-1013.
  • García-Pérez, J. I. and Vall-Castelló, J. (2015), “Youth unemployment in Spain: More issues than just unemployment”, in Dolado, J. (ed.), No country fo young people? Youth labour market problems in Europe, CEPR Press, London, 117-129.
  • García-Pérez, J. I., Marinescu I. and Vall-Castelló, J. (2019), “Can fixed-term contracts put low skilled youth on a better career path? Evidence from Spain”, The Economic Journal, 129: 1693-1730.
  • Goerlich, F. and Miñano, A. (2018), “Unemployment, spell duration and the burden of unemployment in Spain during the XXI Century”, Ivie working papers serie EC, 2018-02.
  • Gorjón, L., de la Rica, S., Osés, A. and Villar, A. (2021), “The long-lasting scar of bad jobs in the Spanish labour market”, ISEAK working paper, 2021-3.
  • Gorjón, L., de la Rica, S. and Villar, A. (2020), “The cost of unemployment from a social welfare approach: the case of Spain and its regions”, Social Indicators Research, 150: 955-976.
  • Gorjón, L., de la Rica, S. and Villar, A. (2022), “The social cost of unemployment by types of workers. The case of Spain”, in Baikady R., Sajid S., Przeperski J., Nadesan V., Islam M. R. and Gao J. (eds.), The Palgrave Handbook of Global Social Problems, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
  • Gradín, C., Cantó, O. and Del Río, C. (2015), “Unemployment and spell duration during the Great Recession in the EU”, International Journal of Manpower, 36: 216-235.
  • Sanz de Galdeano, A. and Terskaya, A. (2020), “The labour market in Spain 2002-2018”, IZA World of Labour.
  • Sengupta, M. (2009), “Unemployment duration and the measurement of unemployment”, The Journal of Economic Inequality, 7: 273-294.
  • Shorrocks, A. (2009a), “Spell incidence, spell duration and the measurement of unemployment”, The Journal of Economic Inequality, 7: 295-310.
  • Shorrocks, A. (2009b), “On the measurement of unemployment”, The Journal of Economic Inequality, 7: 311-327.
  • Villar, A. (2017), Lectures on Inequality, Poverty, and Welfare, Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
  • Von Wachter, T. (2020), “The Persistent Effects of Initial Labor Market Conditions for Young Adults and Their Sources”, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 34: 168-194.