Editor’s note: This article was first published in April 2011; it was written during the debate on Spain’s jobless young graduates and shortly before the 15-M protests, and the forecast that the situation would drag on for a few more years and the age ranges quoted belong to that moment.
I’ve just read an article in ABC (the Spanish daily) about the lost generation, and, as usual, how could it be otherwise, the reason there are young people who have mortgaged their future and have no job prospects in sight is… it’s Zapatero’s fault (José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, then Spain’s prime minister), and they say it without batting an eyelid. Well then… since it’s Zapatero’s fault, we know the essentials, so everything is solved.
To begin with, I understood the lost generation to be the young people now aged between 20 and 24 who dropped out of school, lured by the easy money of the construction boom. Young people who found themselves earning more than €1,500 a month and took on debt, mortgaging their own future and in some cases their parents’, since the parents had guaranteed those debts.
In this case, though, they show us a lost generation of university graduates aged 28 to 31, who, in my view, are already grown men and women, not kids. Let’s talk about investments.
Studying for a degree is an investment you make, whether in money or in time, expecting to receive your return (a job) when you finish. The problem this generation faces right now is that companies are in cost-cutting mode, not hiring mode, so this situation will probably drag on for a few more years.
I’m sorry to tell these young people who studied to become managers, or to work in hospitals, or to sit civil service exams, or to work in banks… that your dream will have to wait, and I’m sorry they didn’t teach you at university that every bubble is followed by a recession.
They tell you to take to the streets and shout, to make noise, to demand what’s yours, what you’ve worked so hard to earn; they tell you to proclaim that you are the future… and on this last point they may be right. You are indeed the future, but in creating businesses.
However much you shout, jobs don’t appear overnight out of a hat as if by magic. However much noise you make in the streets, all you’ll achieve is waking up the neighbours (who already have enough to worry about, struggling to keep up with their own loan repayments), and as for what you’ve worked so hard to earn, I’m very sorry, but you still have to earn it.
They’ve called you “Zapatero’s lost generation”, and if any of you have believed it, you’re even more lost than you seem, because your future jobs went down the drain because of the greed of certain people and institutions.
That’s as far as the real lost generation goes. As for the university graduates who expected to join a prestigious company in their first job… bad news… we appreciate your excellent training, but… have you been taught how to be an entrepreneur and run your own company? No? Too bad!!! That’s what you’re going to have to learn.
My only advice is this: in life, when faced with a problem, sometimes it’s not a question of looking for someone to blame but of finding a solution.
Demonstrate in front of the Moncloa (the prime minister’s official residence) if that’s what you feel like doing, but remember that all you’re doing is smoothing the way for an opposition that is showing you a supposed culprit and not offering you a solution.
And if you want to talk politics, we have a very clear view on that too. On one side, a prime minister who can’t fix the “broken toy”; on the other, the people who broke the toy and insist they left it brand new. I just hope the generation of the future comes loaded with fewer political ideals and more knowledge of economics and finance, because that would solve a lot of problems for my future descendants.
See also: Economics is not a science but politics in disguise
It’s a bad time to find a job, but the ideal time to start your own business. Good luck.
Further reading
Featured image: Theonlysilentbob, CC BY-SA 3.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
