Cambios en la legislación laboral y el desempleo 

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to analyze the adjustment of the labor market, in the context of mayor changes in labor legislation between 1990 and 1996. We analyze the effects of a reduction in labor turnover costs over the unemployment rate and the unemployment duration. By means of a cross section analysis, over the Ministry of Labor’s Household surveys, we find that the reduction in labor turnover costs has lead to a reduction of the unemployment rates of women and young workforce, while the unemployment rate of adult men has increased slightly. Also, the unemployment rate of the more educated workforce has been falling since 1994. In regard to unemployment duration, we find that, in a way similar to the behavior of the unemployment rate, it has fallen for women and young workforce. Something important is that the unemployment duration of people fired from the modern sector is longer than that on previously informal sector workers, which can be associated with changes in legislation as well as with the process of terciarization of the labor force. Finally, the duration of unemployment is longer for more educated workers, in a context when both supply and demand have grown.