Calendar Effects in Daily Aggregate Employment Creation and Destruction in Spain

In this paper we discuss the time series properties of a novel daily series of aggregate employment creation and destruction as registered by the Social Security in Spain. We focus on the period of economic recovery after the 2012 Labour Reform. Our aim is to disentangle the role of key economic factors face to face observed calendar effects. While calendar effects are mostly associated to the incentives for firms to avoid labour costs due to employment legislation, there seem to be determinants of their quantitative importance related to the sectoral composition of the economy and to business cycle fluctuations. First, we identify calendar effects in job flows and we single out the Monday effect: an overreaction in job creation at the beginning of the workweek. Then we investigate the importance of calendar effects for aggregate employment dynamics. We find asymmetry between a “normal” state most of the time, and a state of low growth by the end of every month, which is more intense the second half of the year and while the economy is booming. Finally, we use the register of contracts at the micro level to evaluate how the occupational structure determines the variability of calendar effects over time. Our findings suggest that a move towards a unique contract will dramatically modify the determinants and some of the consequences of temporary employment in Spain.