ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an empirical approach to the impact of the lockdowns decreed during the COVID-19 pandemic in Spain on digital workers in the country. Workers in Spain, as elsewhere, were forced to telecommute due to exceptional, unforeseen and external circumstances. Such a context provided an opportunity to examine the actual level of preparedness of Spanish industry and the labour market for the digital age. However, the study focuses not only on quantifying the actual flow of workers into teleworking environments, but also on identifying certain structural inequalities and linking them to the different profiles of digital workers. A relationship is established and demonstrated between the different uses of digital resources and the availability of technological equipment at home to properly perform remote work tasks and the perceived benefits of teleworking and the subjective social status of workers. These results are interpreted as the result of historical imbalances in industry and social structure, confirming that the emergence of teleworking environments in Spain is conditioned and slowed down by the typology of industry and social structure. The profiles of digital workers are closely correlated with the weak demand for digital and teleworking environments and the slow development of digital cultural management.
