Spain economists to unemployed youth: You may want to leave the country for awhile

There is nothing for you here, go find work elsewhere. I heard the other day that Spain is burdened with a 24 percent unemployment rate, and for youths – under 25  – the unemployment rate is 51 percent.

Employment advisors and economists are suggesting the kids might want to leave Spain and find work elsewhere. Once they leave, along with hopefully finding work, they may be able to learn a trade or go to school to improve their marketability back home.

While economists have praised the reforms as going some way towards resolving the structural issues that have disproportionately affected the young, they say the effects will take years, rather than months, to be felt.

That is time many young people do not have – meaning the best option may be to uproot themselves and leave.

“Young people emigrating might be painful in the short term, but they will one day return with better skills, and knowledge of the world,” says Mr Ramón Pin. [a professor at the IESE business school at the University of Navarra] “It may hurt, but is a good thing for Spain in the long term.”

I think this will be a large problem for the Euro Zone, since there is a wide difference between the unemployment rate from country to country.

Part of the solution to Europe’s unemployment troubles could come from migration if workers … leave for countries with lower jobless rates. Among the euro-zone nations, the unemployment rates range from 4 percent in Austria to 24.1 percent in Spain.

Worker migration can help smooth out the differences in an area that shares the same currency — whether it’s a currency union or a single country. It would be akin to workers in the northeastern United States flocking to employment in the Sun Belt, as they did not long ago.

Since the zone shares a currency and has open borders, I’m wondering if places like Austria, will start to get annoyed at the financial mismanagement in places like Spain and Greece.

For a “makes you go hummm” moment, go check out the Eurostat figures concerning unemployment as compared to other countries like Japan and the United States.

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Steve McGough

Steve's a part-time conservative blogger. Steve grew up in Connecticut and has lived in Washington, D.C. and the Bahamas. He resides in Connecticut, where he’s comfortable six months of the year.

8 Comments

  1. JBS on May 3, 2012 at 10:07 am

    How many guest workers — alien workers imported to do the less desirable jobs — are occupying jobs that could otherwise be done by Spain’s youths? I am sure there are more than a few guest workers. Add a heavy dollop of socialism / communism and you have a whole class of people (the young) who are not part of the economic picture in Spain. And, like many socialist / communist countries, they would like to dump their problem class onto another country. Meanwhile, there is a whole strata of Spain’s population who are monied and control much of the economic opportunities.
    Kinda like the US.



  2. RoBrDona on May 3, 2012 at 2:03 pm

    Traditionally the poor huddled masses would come here – oh wait – we don’t have any opportunity here anymore. Guess they’ll have to go someplace where they don’t tax the people that create economic growth into oblivion.?



  3. sammy22 on May 3, 2012 at 6:07 pm

    Once upon a time? “job mobility” in the US was prized. It does not translate to the EU? Or do they need to come here (legally of course) to experience “job mobility”?



    • GdavidH on May 3, 2012 at 7:04 pm

      Sammy….They are being told to leave the country to find work, not a?farm town or a run down mill town as was implied by “job mobility”.

      Job mobility in the US was not prized as “go to Canada or Mexico”.?



    • Dimsdale on May 4, 2012 at 1:02 pm

      Where are the jobs that they are going to move to?? The rest of the EU is pretty much in the socialist trashcan too.



  4. sammy22 on May 4, 2012 at 12:25 am

    GdavidH, moving around within the EU is not much different, perhaps less so, than moving from New England to Alabama, or 3000 miles to CA, OR etc. The EU is not the Europe of even 40 years ago, when I lived there.



    • GdavidH on May 4, 2012 at 5:55 am

      Different sovereign states/nations none the less. Move to California for a job and you are still in the nation of your citizenship. Job mobility did not mean move out of the country.?



  5. sammy22 on May 6, 2012 at 7:40 pm

    Hey, Dims. If you check the link that Steve posted on the Eurostat figures, you can see that some countries are down are as low as 5%,? Germany is around 6% and even Italy is better off than Spain. The totals for the EU zone is at 10.2%, not that far away from the US figures for the same periods.



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