High housing prices and low wages make it impossible for a person to emancipate themselves on the young median wage
SANTA CRUZ DE TENERIFE/MADRID, Jan. 16 (EUROPA PRESS) –
The Canary Islands was the second autonomous community with the highest youth emancipation rate in the first half of 2023, reaching 19.1% of the resident population, 2.3 points more compared to the first half of 2022 and its best figure since mid-2018. , according to the latest edition of the Emancipation Observatory of the Spanish Youth Council (CJE).
This increase in emancipation occurred even though the youth unemployment rate in the Canary Islands was the third highest in Spain, although it was reduced by 3.4 points compared to 2022 and with the duration of contracts that fell by more than 20 points.
Furthermore, more than a third of the young Canarian population with higher education and completion was overqualified for their jobs and 44% of the youth of the Ilas were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
Likewise, high housing prices and low salaries made it “impossible” for a person earning the median young salary to be emancipated alone, even if they dedicated their entire salary, the report states.
At the national level, the youth emancipation rate rose to 16.3% in the first half of 2023, four tenths more than in 2022, when it stagnated at 15.9%, and exceeds 16% for the first time since first half of 2020, the first year of the pandemic.
Although the report, presented this Tuesday, highlights that this percentage is still below those prior to the crisis caused by the COVID-19 pandemic and “very far” from the results prior to the Great Recession of 2008, when It exceeded 25% of emancipated young people.
Furthermore, the authors of the report indicate that the emancipation rate of young Spaniards remains “well below” the European Union average, which was 31.9% in 2022.
Regarding the most common form of emancipation for young people in Spain, the study indicates that it is renting. However, he adds that the rise in prices has made it increasingly difficult to access a rental that represents, at most, 30% of the median salary of a young person.
Specifically, the research indicates that the median rental price in the first half of 2023 was the highest since records exist: 944 euros per month. This represents 93.9% of the median net salary of a young person.
In addition, it points out that the price increased by 9.3% compared to a year before and 63.9% compared to the price that rental homes had ten years ago. For their part, rooms became more expensive by 7.1% in one year.
Likewise, the study states that the median young salary rose by 5% to reach 12,062.59 euros net per year but points out that the sharp rise in prices caused the purchasing power of a young working person to reduce by 3.3%. in a year. It also points out that the income of a young household had decreased by 6.6%.
Likewise, the authors of the report point out that the myth that young people do not want to work is dismantled based on inactivity data, since the ‘NEET’ rate, that is, young people who were not looking for work and are available to work, It was 1.9% of the inactive population. For its part, the rate of young “sisis”, who worked and studied at the same time, was 34% of the employed population.
The report also emphasizes the situation of risk of poverty or social exclusion that affects 30.2% of young people, a rate only surpassed by childhood.
Given these data, the president of the Spanish Youth Council, Andrea González Henry, has warned of the “lack of action in housing policy in Spain.”
LACK OF ACTION ON HOUSING POLICY
“The Spanish Youth Council continues to warn of the lack of action in housing policy in Spain and the negative consequences that this has caused in the general population and, especially, among youth, who continue to see how year after year the percentage of emancipation due to a loss of purchasing power, a situation that overlaps with the uninterrupted rise in housing rental and purchase prices,” he warned.
In this sense, the vice president and head of socioeconomics and communication of the CJE, Juan Antonio Báez, has pointed out the importance of policies solving housing and employment problems.
“Youth policies in many cases become a flight forward that does not structurally solve the main problems that concern youth, such as housing and employment, and that cause major mental health problems for the population. young population, whose main cause of death is suicide,” he stressed.
