The latest plans to curb youth unemployment in Spain revealed

IN a video speech on Tuesday June 8, Minister of Labour and Social Economy, Yolanda Díaz announced the latest plans to curb youth unemployment in Spain.

With unemployment amongst those aged under 25 fast approaching 40 per cent, the largest number of unemployed in that age group in the European Union, the Government has published an 85 page document pledging €4.9 billion to tackle the problem over the next six years.

According to Díaz, this is the largest amount ever committed to reduce youth employment but it must be remembered, that when the PSOE took over the Government, it made a €2 billion commitment to reduce youth unemployment in 2018.

Rather than bring it down, the opposite was the result although in fairness, they couldn’t have forecast the effects of the pandemic which did see far more job losses than could ever have been predicted.

In her speech, the minister observed “Knowing that we are facing an enormous challenge, the strategy moves in relation to the recommendations of the European Union”, who confirmed that the concept has been created following discussions with the 17 autonomous communities as well as unions and employers.

Much of what is  in the latest plans to curb youth unemployment in Spain is dependent upon the creation of new technology businesses and the training of staff to work in them, many of whom will almost by definition be young but this new industry does need to be funded and to date, Spain has still not received any money from the EU Recovery Programme.

Spain also wants to see more young people becoming entrepreneurs, but again to do this it needs good ideas and easy access to cheap funds which is not necessarily an obvious choice for Spanish banks who are themselves consolidating and shedding staff, adding to, rather than reducing unemployment in the country.