A counterfactual analysis of the impact of the 2008 and 2020 crises on Spanish employment

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to estimate the impact of the 2008 and 2020 economic crises on employment in Spain. Design/methodology/approach The authors perform a counterfactual analysis, combining intervention (interrupted time series) analysis and conditional forecasting to estimate a “crisis-free” scenario. These counterfactual estimates are used as a synthetic control, to be compared with the observed values of the main variables of the Spanish Labor Force Survey (EPA). Findings The authors measure the effect on Spanish employment of the 2008 recession and the ongoing COVID/Ukraine crisis and the speed of recovery, which yields a rigorous dating for the beginning and end of the crises studied. Finally, the authors provide estimates about which part of the employed and unemployed people was in furlough (ERTE) based on microdata provided by the Spanish Institute of Statistics. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, there are no counterfactual studies covering all the basic variables in EPA and no estimates for the effect of ERTEs on the basic employment variables. Finally, the authors combine well-known intervention and forecasting techniques into an integrated framework to assess the effects of both, past and ongoing crises.