The average age of emancipation in Spain exceeds 30 years for the first time

The problems of young Spaniards to become independent have a main cause, the impossibility of accessing a home. Although the average salary of a young person rose 4.6% to reach 13,079.19 euros (1,089.93 net euros per month), the rental price shot up 7.55% and reached 912 euros on average for housing, so a young person would have to dedicate 83.7% of his salary to pay for his apartment. A figure to which, according to this study, should be added the 141 euros on average that the services of a home cost (water, electricity, gas…), which would bring the total expenses to 1,053 euros per month, 96.6% of salary.

“He would only have 36.93 euros left to buy food, buy clothes and spend on leisure, something completely unaffordable,” said the vice president and head of Socioeconomics at the CJE, Juan Antonio Báez, at the presentation of the document.

Faced with a runaway rental market, the only shortcut that young people find for emancipation, even if it is not complete, is to share a flat. A third of the total opted for that option and at the end of 2022 they paid 282.19 euros, 25.9% of their salary, for a room, a figure that continues to be very high and that is “permanently close” to the recommendation of the studies, which set at 30% of the salary the amount that a person should dedicate to paying for their habitual residence.

Another bumpy road is trying to get a mortgage. According to the CJE study, a young man would have to dedicate 3.8 full years of his salary to pay the average down payment on a home, which was established at the end of 2022 at 49,852.20 euros. And in the event that the real estate loan is obtained, the first monthly payment would amount to 661.33 euros, 60.7% of the average salary of those under 30 years of age.

Having a job is also no longer a guarantee for a certain economic independence. In fact, one in five people under 30 with a job were in poverty or at risk of social exclusion in 2022, according to the study. Neither is going to college. Only 22.9% of young people who had completed higher level vocational training or university studies had been able to become emancipated.

Among young people, the unemployment rate almost doubles that of the general population, 22.2% compared to 12.9%, according to data from 2022, and in that period discontinuous permanent hiring has skyrocketed, that of young people that they had an indefinite contract but that, due to the nature of their employment, they only work a few months a year. Spain has gone from having 23,569 fixed discontinuous youth contracts to almost ten times more, 233,828.

The president of the CJE, Andrea González, demanded “real policies in the short, medium and long term” to facilitate access to a roof and called for a “regulation of rental prices for both homes and rooms.” González denounced that social policies “do not count on young people.”