Digital divide across the European Union and labour market resilience

ABSTRACT

Using a regional evolutionary perspective and a cross-regional data panel for 278 European Union regions, this study investigates the relationship between regional digital development and labour market resilience. To address a fundamental concern of regional studies, it proposes an analytical framework that assesses digital disparities in the spatial context and provides a nuanced understanding of digital dimensions impacting labour market resilience. The primary labour market outcome, the employment rate, was evaluated to investigate the regional resilience in the Great Recession. A gradient boosting method was used to identify the digital predictors in different resilience stages and to articulate policy-relevant conclusions.

KEYWORDS:

• labour market resilience
• digital divide
• resilience predictors
• regional disparities

JEL:

• J21
• O18
• R11
• R12

DISCLOSURE STATEMENT

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by a grant from the Ministerul Cercetării şi Inovării (Ministry of Research and Innovation Romania), CNCS – UEFISCDI [project number PN-III-P4-ID-PCCF-2016-0166], within the PNCDI III project ‘ReGrowEU – Advancing Ground-Breaking Research in Regional Growth and Development Theories, through a Resilience Approach: Towards a Convergent, Balanced and Sustainable European Union’.