A Study of the Wages in the Spanish Energy Sector

The role of the energy industry has always been central for one reason or another, being environmentalism the main motive in the last two decades. Therefore, attention and research have been directed in this sense. However, human resources—or human capital—have remained understudied, especially concerning the salaries received. Thus, this study is disruptive as it explored the factors that influence employee remuneration in the energy subsector, using Spain as a case study. For this, the PLS-SEM (Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modelling) path modelling methodology was used, executing a traditional PLS analysis, bootstrapping and, finally, IPMA (Importance-Performance Analysis). Solid and significant relationships were found among labour conditions, human capital, market and wages, with the relationships between human capital and wages and between human capital and labour conditions being especially relevant. Besides, through IPMA, a series of considerations was made regarding the individual indicators according to their relative importance and performance. Consequently, this paper significantly contributes to the extant literature by analysing the composition of wages in the energy sector, which might allow taking valuable management decisions. Nevertheless, the main limitation of this study lies in the availability of data for Spain and, specifically, for workers in the energy supplying industries.