The accessibility to employment offices in the Spanish labor marketImplications in terms of registered unemployment

Abstract

This paper focuses on the differences in the levels of accessibily to public employment offices in Spain. We use administrative data to explore the distribution of unemployed workers and local unemployment rates in the 8,109 Spanish municipalities in 2009. Also, we connect this distribution with the location of employment offices in Spain. Hence the main purpose of our paper is to evaluate the role of the Public Employment Service (PES) in local labor markets by considering the physical distance to employment offices and the spatial structure of their catchment areas. Firstly, we propose a new accessibility measure and, secondly, we estimate a spatial model and test whether a higher accessibility to employment offices could contribute to reduce local unemployment rates. We also find different levels of accessibility to employment offices across the national territory and propose improvements in the PES performance. Our results reveals that public employment offices are insufficient in number and/or poorly located.