Young people have never had an easy time leaving their parents’ house and start your life independentlyBut is that now it’s practically impossible, thus hindering their vital development. Its unemployment rate in Malaga is skyrocketing, those who get a job usually have a low salary or precarious conditions and the price of homes, both for purchase and for rent, is through the roof. It is an explosive mixture that prevents today’s youth, the most prepared in history, from growing from a personal point of view. And that, later, leads to later relationships, lower birth rates, frustrations, in short, problems.
It is a phenomenon that occurs throughout Spain, with Malaga being one of its main squares by population and by the characteristics of its real estate market. The last Emancipation Observatory published by the Spanish Youth Council, with data from the first half of 2021, is devastating. “We have the sad honor of registering the lowest emancipation rate of this century,” reads the document, which exposes the current situation of young people without mincing words. Only 15% of young people have managed to become independent, being the lowest figure since 1998.
It is an endemic problem but this organization highlights that instead of getting better it gets worse, that is to say, that young people have increasingly complicated living conditions. “If the great economic crisis that began in 2008 has already permanently weighed down the life trajectories of an entire generation, the crisis of 2020, aggravated by the COVID-19 pandemic, is having even worse effects, since young people who suffer from them find themselves in a more precarious starting situation than that of the generation that preceded them”, indicates this study, which reflects that even young people who did manage to emancipate themselves have had to return to their parents’ house because “their trajectories of independence became unviable.” In other words, they did not have enough economic resources to live alone.
The average annual salary declared to the Treasury of young people between 18 and 25 years old is 6,200 euros
According to the Active Population Survey prepared by the National Institute of Statistics, the youth unemployment rate in Malagaunderstanding young people as people between the ages of 16 and 29, ended up being 32.8% in 2021. Therefore, a third of young people are directly unemployed despite the fact that most have university or professional training. It is far from the 54% in 2013, but it is still outrageous and one of the highest youth unemployment rates in Europe. If only young people aged 16 to 29 who neither study nor work are included, the unemployment rate in 2021 was 18%.
Young people therefore have difficulties finding a job. But then, if they are finally hired, there is also no special reason to throw the bells on the fly. The Tax Agency publishes every year the salaries declared by citizens. The last ones correspond to 2020 and, in the case of Malaga, they detail that young people between 18 and 25 years old earned, on average, 6,214 euros in a year while in the age group between 26 and 35 the amount amounts to 12,950 euros.
That money gives for little and less to become independent. Buying a house and getting into a mortgage is unfeasible for most young people, it hardly even crosses their minds. But the rental option is also very complicated and to achieve it you have to resign yourself to sharing a flat among several, as if he were an eternal student. “A young person who wanted to emancipate himself alone would dedicate, on average, 81.9% of his salary to rent or would have to adjust to a maximum tolerable area of 29.3 square meters,” laments the report of the Youth Council of Spain.
Buying a home, moreover, is now more expensive than ever. According to a report from the Idealista real estate portal, a square meter in the province of Malaga costs 2,551 euros, 10.2% more than a year ago and its all-time high. This implies that an average house of 100 square meters has a price of 255,000 euros in the province. If the purchase is unimaginable, rent is automatically thought of, but it is also difficult. According to data from Idealista, renting a home, for example, in Malaga capital has an average cost of 9.9 euros per square meter, about 1,000 euros for a 100-meter flat, so, at most, you could take a room.
You have to have a good savings to mortgage
A recent study by Fotocasa indicates that it is necessary to have almost 60,000 euros saved to be able to pay the down payment on a home in Malaga. And not a particularly luxurious one but a normal flat of 80 square meters. It is 46% more than just five years ago. Few young people can afford to have that amount in their bank account. In the Idealista portal, for example, you can do a mortgage simulation. We put 255,000 euros, the average price of a home in Malaga. Normally banks give up to 80% of the mortgage so, in that case, the remaining 20%, 50,000 euros, would have to be contributed from the start. However, it is not only the price of the apartment but there are also other taxes and expenses to pay. If you had that money and decided to continue, the monthly fee would be 690 euros over a period of 30 years. At 40 years, a monthly payment of 535 euros per month would come out.
