“The situation of youth continues to be very serious. Even by working or finishing higher education, a young person is not guaranteed to have a house or to 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 states.
While the emancipation rate in Spain remains at 15.9%, as in the previous semester, the European rate doubles and climbs to 31.9%. Becoming independent in this country is “a chimera”, describes the Observatory, which continues to focus on unemployment and the price of housing. The policies “do not structurally solve the main problems that concern young people, such as housing and employment, and that cause major mental health problems in the young population, whose main cause of death is suicide” , he 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 top it all off, having a job does not guarantee, not even remotely, the possibility of emancipation. One in five people under 30 with a job was in a situation of poverty or social exclusion. Although the average salary in this segment rose by 4.6% (net 13,079.19 euros per year or 1,089.93 per month), the price of rents climbed by 7.55%, up to an average of 912 euros per month. So, to rent alone, a young person must spend 83.7% of their salary. Adding the 141 euros on average corresponding to the supplies and services of a home, the bill rises to 1,053 euros per month, the equivalent of 96.6% of the average salary of employed young people. “In other words – the report summarizes – he would only have 36.93 euros left to buy food, buy clothes and spend on leisure, a completely unacceptable situation”.
Alternatives: live forever at your 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 independents lived with other people. Because buying a flat is only within the reach of a minority. The average cost of a home (49,852.20 euros) is equivalent to 3.8 years of salary and the first letter of the mortgage (661.33 euros) takes 60.7% of the salary.
Andrea González, president of the Youth Council, attributes the low percentage of emancipation to the progressive loss of purchasing power. Not even having higher education helps: only 22.9% of young people with a university degree or higher vocational education had managed to become independent.
After growing by two points in one year, Catalonia is the community with the most young people who have left their parents’ home (20.2%), despite the fact that 80% share a flat. Castilla-La Mancha (12.3%) has the lowest proportion of emancipated people and, in addition, 23.6% of employed young people are at risk of poverty and exclusion. In the Community of Madrid, to purchase a home, a young person should allocate 86.25% of their salary to the mortgage payment and have 82,310.85 euros saved (more than five times their annual income) to access the mortgage Ceuta and Melilla have the highest unemployment rate and 56.4% of their young people are poor or live in homes with severe material shortages.
