High-speed rail (HSR) provides fast passenger services that could benefit certain businesses in the service sector but may cause relative declines in employment in agricultural and manufacturing sectors. We present a case study of the labor market in contexts of Spain—with a service-dominated economy and a smaller but significant manufacturing economy—by exploiting variations in the location of HSR services and the timing of their establishment. Using Spain’s labor force survey data, we employ difference-in-differences models to estimate the effects of HSR services on proportions of workers by economic sector in Spain at the province level. The main results suggest that, while there are national trends in rising service employment and declining manufacturing and agricultural employment, such trends are more significant in Spain’s HSR provinces after—and only after—HSR begins to operate. The labor market effects of HSR services are most likely to be driven by workers’ job changes across economic sectors, i.e., agricultural and manufacturing workers shift to the service sector; we find no significant evidence that HSR services create new employment, change patterns of labor force participation, cause international and internal labor migration, or affect local workers’ human capital characteristics.

高铁 (HSR) 提供快速客运服务，可能使服务业的某些企业受益，但可能导致农业和制造业的就业相对下降。我们通过利用 HSR 服务的位置及其建立时间的变化，展示了西班牙背景下劳动力市场的案例研究——其经济以服务业为主，制造业经济规模较小但意义重大。我们使用西班牙的劳动力调查数据，采用差分差分模型来估计高铁服务对西班牙省级经济部门工人比例的影响。主要结果表明，虽然全国趋势是服务业就业增加，制造业和农业就业减少，在高铁开始运营之后（并且仅在高铁开始运营之后），这种趋势在西班牙的高铁省份更为显着。高铁服务的劳动力市场效应最有可能是由工人在经济部门之间的工作变化所驱动的，即农业和制造业工人转向服务部门；我们没有发现高铁服务创造新就业、改变劳动力参与模式、导致国际和国内劳动力迁移或影响当地工人人力资本特征的重要证据。