“The situation of youth continues to be very serious. Not even working or completing higher education is a young person guaranteed to have a house or stop being at risk of poverty”. The conclusions of the Emancipation Observatory, prepared by the Spanish Youth Council, corresponding to the second semester of 2022 continue to be depressing. For the first time, the average age of emancipation exceeds 30 years (30.3). “Young people in Spain cannot be emancipated until they stop being young,” the report assesses.
While the youth emancipation rate in Spain remains at 15.9% as in the previous semester, the European rate doubles it and rises to 31.9%. Becoming independent in this country is “a chimera”, as described by the Observatory, which continues to focus on unemployment and housing prices as endemic barriers. The policies “do not enter into a structural solution to the main problems that concern youth, such as housing and employment, and that cause major mental health problems for the young population, whose main cause of death is suicide,” argues.
The unemployment rate among young people (22.2%) is much higher than that of the general population (12.9%) and remains at levels similar to those of 2008, when the economic and financial crisis broke out. To make matters worse, having a job does not guarantee, far from it, the possibility of emancipation. One in five under 30 years of age with a job was in a situation of poverty or social exclusion.
Although the average salary of this segment increased by 4.6% (13,079.19 net euros per year or 1,089.93 per month) the rental price rose by 7.55%, up to an average of 912 euros per month. Thus, to rent alone, a young person must allocate 83.7% of his salary. Adding the 141 euros on average corresponding to the supplies and services of a home, the bill amounts to 1,053 euros per month, the equivalent of 96.6% of the average floor of young people with a job. “That is to say -summarizes the report-, he would only have 36.93 euros left to buy food, buy clothes and spend on leisure, something completely unaffordable”.
Alternatives: spend forever in the parents’ house or share a flat. The average rent for a room at the end of 2022 was 282.19 euros, 25.9% of a young person’s salary. This is a widely used modality, especially in Catalonia, where 80% of the self-employed lived with other people. Because buying a flat is only within the reach of a minority. The average income for a home (49,852.20 euros) is equivalent to 3.8 years of full salary and the first monthly mortgage payment (661.33 euros) takes 60.7% of the salary.
Andrea González, president of the Youth Council, attributes the continuous decrease in the percentage of emancipation to the progressive loss of purchasing power of young people. Not even having higher education helps: only 22.9% of young people with a university degree or higher vocational training had managed to become independent in the period analysed.
After increasing 2 points in one year, Catalonia is the community with the most young people who have left their parents’ home (20.2%), although 80% share a flat with other people. Castilla-La Mancha (12.3%) has the lowest proportion of emancipated people and, furthermore, 23.6% of its young people with a job are at risk of poverty and social exclusion. In the Community of Madrid, to acquire a free rental home, a young person should allocate 86.25% of their salary to the mortgage payment and have saved 82,310.85 (more than 5 times the income for a year) to obtain the mortgage. Ceuta and Melilla have the highest unemployment rate and 56.4% of their young people are poor and/or live in homes with severe material deprivations.
