The evolution of Spanish unemployment has been quite idiosyncratic. The full-employment levels of the early seventies … were followed by unemployment rates that were the highest within the OECD countries in the aftermath of the oil price … shocks. While unemployment was extremely persistent in most of the eighties and nineties, it experienced its sharpest decline …

causes of the unemployment upturn in 1973-1983 and the subsequent decline in 1993-2006. Our results show that (i) the main … determinants of the unemployment rise in the 1970s and early 1980s were wage-push factors, the two oil price shocks and the … increase in interest rates, and (ii) the acceleration in capital accumulation was the crucial driving force of unemployment in …