Predicción del Empleo Sectorial y Total en Base a Indicadores de Confianza Empresarial

In this paper we examine the ability that entrepreneurial sentiment indicators may have to predict year-on-year aggregate and sectoral employment in Chile. When focusing only on the predictive relationship between sentiment indicators and y-o-y employment, putting aside the autocorrelation structure of y-o-y employment, we find sound evidence of predictability for the aggregate employment in Chile as well as for y-o-y employment in the construction, industry and retail sectors. When taking into account the autocorrelation structure of y-o-y employment, the additional predictive ability of the sentiment indicators is more elusive and harder to detect. Nevertheless, the evidence shows that at the aggregate level the entrepreneurial sentiment indicator does have predictive ability beyond that contained in a reasonable univariate representation of y-o-y employment in Chile. While the evidence at the sectoral level is not as robust as at the aggregate level, some evidence of predictability is found for the construction sector. In sharp contrast, the evidence of predictability in the mining sector is weak.