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This paper focuses on the differences in the levels of accessibility to public employment offices in the Spanish municipalities. Hence the main purpose is to evaluate the role of the public employment services in local labour markets by considering the physical distance to employment offices and the spatial structure of their catchment areas. First, we propose an accessibility measure and, second, we estimate a spatial model and test whether a higher accessibility to employment offices could contribute to reduce local unemployment rates. The results suggest that policy-makers should strive to improve the accessibility to employment offices so that adequate assistance to find suitable employment may be ensured to every jobseeker. Resumen Este artículo se centra en las diferencias en los niveles de accesibilidad a las oficinas públicas de empleo en los municipios españoles. El objetivo principal es por tanto evaluar el papel de los servicios públicos de empleo en los mercados laborales locales, en función de la distancia física a las oficinas de empleo y la estructura espacial de sus zonas de influencia. Primero, se propone una medida de accesibilidad y, a continuación, se estima un modelo espacial y se comprueba si una mayor accesibilidad a las oficinas de empleo podría contribuir a reducir las tasas de desempleo local. Los resultados sugieren que los responsables de formular políticas deberían esforzarse por mejorar la accesibilidad a las oficinas de empleo, a fin de poder asegurar a cada demandante de empleo la ayuda apropiada para que logre encontrar un empleo adecuado. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The objective is to analyse how one's place of residence affects the probability of finding a job and to measure the definition of the public jobcentre catchment area, which contributes to improving labour outcomes in the most deprived areas. We propose a multilevel model to estimate the probability of finding a job controlling for individual characteristics and discerning the effect of the place of residence and the contribution of public employment centres. We use an administrative register of jobseekers (70,379) grouped by 384 postal codes and 24 jobcentres. The econometric results confirm the hypothesis that there is a strong residence effect that is not sufficiently mitigated by public employment services. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]