The Pandemic Brings The Youth Emancipation Rate Down To 17.3%

The pandemic has aggravated the low capacity for emancipation that young people already dragged from the last economic crisis in 2008, according to the latest report from the Emancipation Observatory presented this Thursday by the Youth Council of Spain (CJE).

Despite the fact that the second semester of 2019 was already traumatic, the confinement and growth of youth unemployment in the first six months of 2020 lowered the rate to lows at the beginning of the century: only 17.3% of Spaniards aged between 16 and During this period, 29 years lived away from the home of his parents or a relative.

You have to go back to 2002 to find a lower percentage, and the future does not look promising: “Without quality employment, it will not be possible to reach the expected rates,” said Elena Ruiz, president of the CJE,

Adrià Junyent, vice president of the Council, has related the low emancipation with the job insecurity of the population under 30 years of age.

“We young people have suffered more from ERTE – 29.6%, compared to 24% of the rest of the population – with the loss of wages that this implies.” Worse still is the employment rate, where only one in three of Spaniards between 16 and 29 years old has a job, and it drops to 18.2% between 16 and 24.

In addition, youth unemployment is double that of among the rest of the population, 30%. “We have suffered the biggest rise in unemployment this year [compared to other age groups], 4.8 percentage points more,” Junyent added.

Women continue to be much more likely to become independent: 20.8% of them do so, compared to 14% of men. However, this year the number of emancipated women has fallen slightly more than men, as they have been more affected by the pandemic.

“They have gone more to the ERTE, have a higher rate of inactivity and concentrate more part-time,” has detailed the political scientist of the CJE.

The crisis has also hit the population that only has primary education the hardest, due to their job insecurity. In this group, emancipation has fallen 2.3 percentage points, to 23%, between January and June 2020. Immigrants are the next most affected. 34.6% live independently, 3.4 points less than in 2019.

On the other hand, Joffre López, author of the study, sociologist and professor at the Autonomous University of Barcelona, ​​has highlighted the ironic situation that has occurred this year, in which there has been a reduction in the price of the real estate market that has not been taken advantage of .

“For young people, even though prices have dropped, the chances of emancipation are even lower than last year.”

In this way, in rent the prices start from 900 euros on average, an average mortgage from 600 euros and a shared flat from 269 euros. But with an average salary of 973 euros among young Spaniards, the rent would represent 93% of their net salary, “above the reasonable 30% [established by various organizations]” , López pointed out.

A mortgage would be 56% and share 27.7%. In the case of the mortgage, in addition, the entry and taxes should be added, “the equivalent of three full years of salary.”

Compared with previous years, emancipation reached minimums in 1997 —with 15% – and maximums of 26% in 2008.

Since then, the figure has decreased until this year, when the decline has been accentuated by the health situation , which has led to the deepest drop in emancipation since 1988 (1.3 points less from 18.7% in 2019).

By Communities, the Basque Country is the region where more young people have returned to live with their parents in the first half of the year (three points less in the emancipation rate), followed by Extremadura (2.5 points less) and Asturias (2, 1 point less).