Spanish labour market: A step before economic recovery

Abstract

The depth of the economic crisis faced by developed economies since 2008 until today, with different levels of intensity in its development, has led to the uncertainty about how has to evolve the capitalist economic system in the next years. This important economic recession is not only an intense deceleration in the economic growth of the most countries around the world, but it also leads to a significant change in the structural characteristics of the current economic model. To this situation are contributing not only the negative effects of the economic depression, but in this regard it is also necessary to highlight the economic policies adopted by the most influential countries in the world. These transformations are singularly affecting on the labour market structures in the western countries, which are experiencing both an accelerated changing process and depth unbalanced.

Under this point of view, the Spanish case is a singular one, moving itself from a process of accelerated economic growth, supported by the development of internal demand, to a deep process of economic stagnation, due to the finishing of the previous economic model, being the external market unable to take over, showing the shortcomings of productive sector competitiveness in general. Thus, the unbalanced in the labour market has reached an unknown intensity without comparison in the international panorama.

The aim of this paper is to analyze the situation of the Spanish labour market, focusing itself in the effects of both the current recession and the labour reforms adopted during this period. First of all, it is analyzed the main structural characteristics and its changes during the last years. Secondly, it is exposed the economic diagnosis offered by the official channels, which support and make several policy recommendations taken into consideration by the Government, about the development of the labour market in this period. This economic diagnosis has served of inspiration for the elaboration of the several labour market rules reforms adopted during the recession, especially the last reform carried out in 2012 and its subsequent modifications. In the next part, it is exposed a critic analysis about this economic diagnosis, which behind of its elaboration is sustained by an important ideological biased. Finally, this kind of analysis exposed leads to several recommendations which offer an economic political alternative, in order to solve the deep crisis which affects the economic growth and the unbalanced in the labour market in Spain.