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IZA Discussion Paper No. 18755
June 2026
Post-Great Recession Labor Market Dynamics in Spain: A Comparison of Alternative Datasets

Using Social Security (SocS) records covering the universe of Spanish employees and firms, we compare firms' employment dynamics between 2013-2024 to those obtained from the Bank of Spain's microdata drawn from firms' balance sheets (CBI) as well as those of U.S. firms. Compared with CBI, SocS reveals less volatile aggregate employment growth and higher job reallocation rates driven by firms' large employment adjustments. Worker reallocation in Spain remains below U.S. levels and did not decline after the 2022 labor reform. SocS also highlights the central role of small firms in Spanish job creation and documents a left-shifted firm-size distribution relative to the U.S. Start-ups entering smaller, having lower survival probabilities, and weaker employment growth among survivors all contribute to a smaller Spanish firm size.

Communications
Mark Fallak
mark.fallak@liser.lu
+352 585-855-526
World of Labour
Olga Nottmeyer
olga.nottmeyer-ext@liser.lu
+352 585-855-501
Network Coordination
Christina Gathmann
christina.gathmann@liser.lu

The IZA@LISER Network is a global community of scholars dedicated to excellence in labor economics and related fields, now coordinated at the Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER) following its transition from Bonn.

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