Regional Mobility and Unemployment Transitions in the UK and Spain

Abstract

If the distribution of industrial employment is uneven across regions, changes in patterns of production will require the reallocation of labour across regions as well as industries. In this paper we consider this aspect of the adjustment process. Specifically, we compare the geographical mobility of the workforce in the UK and Spain, and examine the extent to which differences in mobility explain differences in the probability of exiting unemployment between the two countries.

Keywords: unemployment, mobility, regional migration

JEL Classification: J61, J64