Canarian pre-university students are among the most pessimistic in Spain regarding their job future, as 49% believe that employment will worsen in the next five years.
This is according to the 'X Young Business Talents Report: The vision of young people', on the attitudes and trends of young Spanish pre-university students, carried out by ABANCA, ESIC University, Herbalife and Praxis MMT.
In this sense, 31.1% think that the situation will be the same and only 19.9% think that employment will improve.
They see the future of youth employment with pessimism, 60.5% of students in the Canary Islands are confident of getting a job in less than a year after finishing their studies.
Among the factors that they consider most important when finding employment, 51.7% highlight interest and desire to work, followed by experience (51.4%), having a good level of languages (49.3%), knowledge (46.9%), and a good academic record (36%).
The Canary Islands is one of the autonomous communities where young people are more determined to study a university degree (70.6% vs. 65.1% of the national average); 15% are still undecided about whether or not to continue and 14.3% do not plan to continue their studies.
Among young people who want to study a university degree, the ones that arouse the most interest are: Business/Economics (29.7%), Marketing/Advertising (22.5%), and Teaching (22.5%).
Vocation (71.3%) is the main factor they indicate when choosing a career, followed by professional opportunities (56.9%) and salary (41.3%). Regarding the usefulness of what they are studying, 74.1% believe that it will be professionally useful to them.
The role of AI for young people
According to the results of this report, carried out on pre-university students who are in 4th year of ESO, 1st and 2nd year of Bachillerato and the basic, intermediate and higher cycles of Professional Training, 9 out of 10 young people consider that artificial intelligence will change the world as we know it.
In addition, they are among the most pessimistic regarding the impact of AI on employment, since 83.9% believe that it will have a direct negative effect and will take away jobs.
Regarding the relationship of young people with AI, a little more than half (55.2%) uses artificial intelligence to do work; 20.3% are interested, but do not use it because they do not know well what it consists of, 13.3% use it only as a game and 11.2% state that they are not interested in anything related to artificial intelligence.
Entrepreneurial vocation
Regarding the professional activity that they would like to carry out in the future, the young people of the Canary Islands are, together with the Andalusians, the Spaniards who most want to be civil servants or public employees (26.9%), followed by being entrepreneurs (22.4%) or working in a company (10.8%). Among the preferred sectors for young people to undertake are education/training (15.9%), sports (11.2%) and commerce (10.6%).
The main reason why young pre-university students choose to undertake "is to carry out a project that is attractive to them and work on what they really like. Other reasons are being their own bosses, not depending on the strict schedules and rules of an office, having more opportunities and higher income", explains Nuño Nogués.
International mobility
Given the possibility of changing countries for work, 74.1% of young people from the Canary Islands are clear about it and would emigrate, being the third community where their young people are most willing to leave our borders, only behind Aragon (77.6%) and Catalonia (76.8%).
Among the reasons why they would leave, the first option is to live a new experience (39.9%), followed by the lack of opportunities in Spain (25.9%), to have a better salary (20.6%), and to learn languages (10.1%).
Among the destination countries that are most attractive to them, the ranking is led by the United States (22%), followed by the United Kingdom (21.7%), Germany (13.3%) and Italy (13.3%).