Examining The Employment Intensity Of Economic Growth Of The PIIGS

Abstract

At the beginning of the second decade of the 21^st century, several countries in the periphery of Europe began suffering from sovereign debt crises, resulting from and contributing to economic weakness. As of late 2013, each country was struggling with double-digit unemployment rates with rates in Greece and Spain near 27%. Though economic weakness was responsible for falling employment, the linkage between economic growth and employment, known as the employment intensity of economic growth (also called employment elasticity), may differ between nations. Estimation of models developed reveal different dynamics in the respective countries. Regardless of the model employed, the results revealed a very high employment intensity of economic growth in Spain relative to the other nations, indicating that employment was highly sensitive to changes in economic growth. As such, an equivalent decline in GDP had a much larger impact on employment in Spain than the other PIIGS. There is evidence that the structure of the labor market may play some role in explaining different employment elasticities for the countries in question. In particular, the degree of unionization appeared to be negatively correlated with employment intensity (economic growth had a smaller impact on employment in nations that have a larger percentage of unions) while the portion of workers on temporary contracts was positively correlated with employment intensity; countries with a larger percentage of workers on temporary contracts, such as Spain, had a higher employment intensity as employment responded more to changes in economic growth.