The CIS barometer for the month of January probes the characteristics of the main concerns of Spaniards at the beginning of 2023% of the citizens surveyed. However, the same question reflects that unemployment has lost weight as a concern for those under 34 years of age, as it happened in 2021. Only 4.9% of young people between 18 and 24 years of age and the same proportion with newborn ages between the ages of 25 and 34 have argued that unemployment is the main problem that currently exists in Spain.
In recent years, no constant trend can be observed in this regard. In January 2019, more than 24% of young people in both age groups confessed that this was the main cause of discomfort in the country and in the same month of 2020 -just before the outbreak of the pandemic- more than a third did so. of youth over 25 years of age. However, in 2021, after months of restrictions that slowed down the economic recovery, only 4% (18-24) and 5.4% (25-34) placed this problem in first place, giving greater weight to the covid and the crisis . On the other hand, in 2023, beyond the economic crisis, it is the political problems and the bad behavior of the representatives that receive more attention from this sector of the population.
The difference is especially significant among the Spaniards surveyed with ages detected between 25 and 34 years, given that adding the answers that place unemployment as one of the three main problems in Spain, a differentiation of more is observed with respect to 2021, from 22.6% has gone to 14.9%. Among the youngest the difference is greater than two points. But the distance is even more notable in the year-on-year comparison, since in January 2022 -before the war in Ukraine- 22.8% of those over 18 and 20.2% of those over 25 had placed unemployment on this podium , which in the first case represents a difference of almost ten points.
Since then, the labor reform has implied changes in the labor market that have resulted in a significant reduction in the temporary employment of young people. However, this has not prevented the country from leading the ‘ranking’ of youth unemployment month after month in the European Union. In addition, according to Eurostat data, unemployment among those under 25 years of age increased by more than one point throughout 2022, a year that also left the sad fact that four out of ten young people made redundant were Spanish.
These data show that the drop in positions in this concern is not due to the fact that the labor market has received new adults “with open arms” or that their working conditions have ceased to be precarious, but rather, from the Council of Youth of Madrid point out that this group has developed a disaffection with respect to this problem, since the concatenation of crises has made them end up normalizing it. “It is something so frequent in our lives that it has come to be recognized as a fact and instead, the focus is on the precarious conditions of employment, but it is important to see that as a whole it is one of the fundamental problems that we face as young people. “, points out Cristina Rodríguez, Socioeconomic and Education member of the Madrid space.
The youth manager points out that in the last study she carried out, with data from the previous year, 15.6% of young people under 25 who worked remained at risk of poverty, which added to other problems, can make the conditions of the labor market are discouraging for many people who are of age to join it. Which is something, interprets Rodríguez, which can tangentially lead to disaffection towards concern about unemployment despite the fact that young people do worry about other economic problems such as the rise in energy prices or the food in which they can in his first response, crisis economy. Uncertainty has become the norm for those born in the 1990s and later, in the workplace as well.
