Editor’s note: This article was first published in September 2010 after the Spanish property bubble burst; the unemployment picture, bank mergers and emigration to London and Italy it describes reflect that moment.
I’ll start by saying that when I see the unemployment figures for young people who have finished university, I don’t much like them, but when I go out into the street and see our future generation, I’m not exactly delighted either.
Every newspaper talks about this new generation as the lost generation, meaning that when the property bubble arrived, many dropped out of their studies, drawn by the money to be made in construction. These young people got into so much debt that now, with the bubble over, they find themselves with no job, no education and an adult’s debts.
What about young university graduates?
Their case is even more complicated. Those who studied architecture, because it was a degree with a bright future, are now at the top of the unemployment lists, and chemists and engineers of every kind are above 40% unemployment.
Business management and administration students are finding companies in the middle of cutting staff and costs, so new hiring of this kind of professional looks unlikely (although, in time, it will be one of the degrees with the best job prospects).
Those who trained for banking are finding a financial system full of mergers designed to close branches and cut staff, so in the short term the outlook is bleak.
We supposedly have the best-prepared young people in Spain’s history, who, instead of earning the 60,000 euros a year their training ought to command, are earning around 15,000 euros, and would rather go and work as waiters in London, where they will at least earn about 30,000 euros. Exactly double, for a job that supposedly nobody wants.
Nurses and medical professionals are packing their bags to work in hospitals and the private medical sector in Italy. Multinationals and large corporations are recruiting our best graduates to take them abroad, because in Spain they can’t be paid a decent salary that matches their training.
The system doesn’t help, but just as we have the young people best prepared for the world of work, we also have the young people least prepared for real life. I don’t know whether to blame the system, the parents or the young people themselves, but there is something people seem afraid to say: we also have young people with some very serious problems in the short and medium term.
We have young people with a serious drinking problem. Freedom turned into excess, and tomorrow’s company managers now decorate our streets “drunk as a skunk”.
They have studied economics, but most of them use it to keep exact accounts of how, for the price of three cuba libres, they can buy a bottle of whisky and two bottles of soft drink and so get about 21 cuba libres. Whoever drinks the least is a coward.
They have studied pharmacy and nursing, so they know perfectly well how to take vitamin B12 to reduce the effects of alcohol. There have always been cases of alcohol poisoning, but for the first time they have multiplied faster than the return on a fixed-term deposit. Alcohol-induced comas now happen frequently before 10 p.m. on Fridays and Saturdays, when the party supposedly starts at 11 p.m.
And I agree that we have the best-prepared young people, since many of them know how to smoke cannabis and know first-hand the effects of ecstasy and every kind of designer drug. Of course, at university anything goes. The problem is that, years later, only a tiny percentage manage to give up their habits and not relapse.
On top of that, we still have young people who are not prepared in financial education or entrepreneurial spirit, although, thank goodness, that is gradually improving.
These are our young people and our future business leaders.
I should say that I’m speaking in general terms, knowing perfectly well that not all our young people fit this description, and that we have great, well-prepared future leaders.
Remember: Vices are called vices because they are addictive. Everyone believes they will be able to give up the habit tomorrow, and more than 70% of addicts fail when they try to quit any bad addictive habit. Be professional in your working life, and be smart and consistent in your personal life. Health problems will come on their own. Don’t go looking for them.
Further reading
Featured image: Lojwe, CC0 1.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
