In January 2021, Spain had the highest youth unemployment rate in the European Union. Approximately 40% of people under 25 years of age in a situation
of working did not have the option of joining the labor market. The Canary Islands are not outside of this reality, quite the contrary. In the second quarter of the year we were the Autonomous Community where the youth population was most punished by unemployment with an unemployment rate of 52.3, according to the EPA.
Although the months of August and September have brought slight improvements in the number of hirings, the truth is that young people, together with low-skilled workers,
are the ones that are being most affected by the negative impact of the crisis.
First it was the great crisis or the great recession, as everyone wants, that we lived between 2008 and 2013, and that left many young people dismounted from the labor market. Now, the economic crisis derived from the health crisis due to COVID, leaves us with a completely bleak outlook for those who, for one reason or another, abandoned their training at the end of compulsory education or who did not even finish it because, unfortunately, in the islands we are still champions of school dropout in Spain.
Nor is the other side encouraging, that of the boys and girls who have finished their studies and are looking for their first job without getting it and who live in the same uncertainty.
Undoubtedly, it is a generation of young people with an uncertain future. At the moment the economic recovery and the creation of new jobs is far away. There are no green shoots in sight or signs that they can join the labor market until the situation improves and they know that this will most likely be when they are closer to 30 than to the 24 or 25 years they may have now. And with such an uncertain future, there is only despair and frustration. Frustration for not being able to develop professionally, for lacking opportunities after so many years of effort and because without work there is no emancipation or personal projects to undertake.
As things stand, young people can only put the brakes on the logical personal and professional growth they crave. Stop and take advantage of the moment, in the best of cases and if the family economic situation allows it, continue with their training and acquire more knowledge. It would not hurt if in the middle of this dead end young people felt that their rulers have them present in their public policies beyond a cultural bonus to celebrate their coming of age and when little or nothing is done to guarantee them a better educational and professional training.
Davinia Déniz, member of NNGG of Lanzarote and of the Board of Directors of the PP of Lanzarote