Given how badly the Housing Bubble has turned out for Western nation economies, you’d think policies to pin economic hopes on housing would be soundly renounced.
But so far, all I have seen and heard have amounted to hair of the dog hangover cures.
Monday, Jul 16, 2012 06:58 AM PDT
Unemployed generation threatens Spain
No end’s in sight to Spain’s economic crisis as the government embarks on new austerity measures
By Paul Ames, GlobalPost
This article originally appeared on GlobalPost.
MADRID, Spain — Beatriz Martinez graduated with a degree in art history three years ago. She’s worked only eight months since then, mostly telemarketing.
Twenty-three-year-old Andrea Gonzales, newly qualified in specialized teaching, works stacking shelves in a supermarket.
And Diego, who declined to give his full name, is a freelance photographer. He’s spent most of his time volunteering with a protest group that tries to protect families from eviction since his commissions dried up.
Meet Spain’s lost generation.
More than half of people under 25 here are out of work. That’s Europe’s highest rate, ahead of even Greece, which has come close. Spaniards are worried the strain it’s exerting on society is putting stability at risk as the government prepares to cut unemployment benefits, among other tough measures aimed at meeting the obligations of a eurozone bailout.
The country’s largest labor union, Comisiones Obreras, or CCOO, says 1.73 million people under 30 are unemployed.
However, it says the real situation is worse than the figure shows. Of the 2.4 million under 30 who have jobs, half of them are working on precarious short-term contracts. Another 200,000 are believed to be on unpaid or poorly compensated “internships” the union criticizes for offering no real training. It says many are schemes for unscrupulous businesses to exploit cheap labor.
Hanging out with friends in Madrid’s gritty Lavapies neighborhood, Martinez says “nobody” entertains hopes the situation will soon improve. “I lost my last job a week ago, and more than half of my friends are in the same situation,” she elaborates. “And the ones who aren’t probably will be in a couple months.”
Like so much that’s wrong with Spain’s economy, the soaring youth unemployment has its roots in last decade’s property boom.
Skyrocketing real estate values prompted construction companies to increase wages to attract workers. Many young men dropped out of school to earn good money working on building sites.
By the height of the boom in 2007, more than a third of Spaniards between the ages of 18 and 24 had dropped out of high school, more than double the European Union’s average.
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