This paper analizes the effect of education on job productivity, via improvements in workers human capital. Together with the conventional measures of human capital, such as the average years of school attendance, some altemative measures which take into account the distribution by levels of studies of the employed population we also employ. Al1 these measures are subject to the corresponding empincal test using a novel database on the territorial distribution of the Spanish population classified by completed studies. While the use of average years does not produce favorable results, less restrictive altemative indicators show the positive contribution of each successive education leve1 on labor productivity.

Keywords: productivity, human capital.