The crises of recent times have left an indelible mark on the minds of Basque youth, who look to the future with less confidence than before the pandemic and the invasion of Ukraine. It is clear from the conclusions of “Aurrera Begira-Indicia of young expectations”, a report presented this Thursday in Bilbao and which is based on a survey of the situation of young people and the perception of the world around them.
In order to confidently predict the future of the new generations, three things are considered: the assessment they make of their personal situation, the level they give to the group as a whole, the third of the present time. in Euskadi. The study shows that an excellent -70 out of 100- indicate personal situation, with respect to family, leisure, health, body image or work situation. But optimism does not exactly reign in the assessment made by the state of the whole group, which remains at 54 out of 100, which makes the confidence index to be at the last level in recent years before the start of successive crises. .
This is the generation that in recent decades has suffered from “great uncertainty from the economic crisis, the impact of the global health crisis and the effects of the invasion of Ukraine”. The state of the mind of youth is not alien to this very adverse event. A context that has contributed to the decline of confidence in the future”, acknowledges the Secretary General for Social Transition and the 2030 Agenda, Jonan Fernandez, who presented the conclusions of the report together with the Director of Youth, Miren Saratxaga.
The biggest disparity between expectations and reality concerns financial availability. “On the scale of ten aspects of life that Aurrera Begira studies, the highest gap between the importance given and the satisfaction perceived with respect to the money available per month occurs again. Employment situation, unemployment and health are also aspects with important gaps. “according to the conclusions of the study.
For all these reasons, the assessment that young people achieve at the present time stands at 62 hundred points, the lowest value in four years. The research is based on a survey conducted between December 12 and 19, 2022, to which 3,538 people aged 15 to 29 responded, 1,063 of them in Gipuzkoa. This work, which was first carried out in 2013, arose from the concern of giving a voice and listening to the youth in a moment of crisis, something, unfortunately, so strong a decade later.
Its objective “was and still is” to find out how young people evaluate the situation, as well as their expectations in the short and medium term regarding problems such as unemployment, emigration, the difficulty of emancipation or the level of confidence in the future.
precarious work
The study allows us to compare with the results of the last decades. During this time, the fear of losing their job increases, while the working conditions will worsen. The report reports that 45% of young people are quite likely to do something like this within a year. The fear that is three points more than in 2021, although looking back in time, with respect to the results of the 2013 survey, that fear is twelve points lower, which shows a strong deterioration in the state of mind left after a decade a. economic recession.
Despite the uncertainty of the current situation, the percentage of unemployed young people who hope to find a job is 71%, almost ten points above the result of the previous year. Along the same lines, almost eight out of ten young people hope to find a job next to their institution when they finish their studies.
The report also considers the hope of emancipation “crippled”. The percentage of young people who believe that within a year they cannot become independent due to socio-economic difficulties is about 45%, the same figure as a decade ago and three points more than in 2021.
The study first includes the rate of delayed motherhood and fatherhood, that is, those who admit that they want to have children, but do not believe that they will have children at the desired age. It accounts for 26% of young people between the ages of 15 and 29.
For its part, the expectation of forced emigration, which is the percentage of young people who believe that in the future they will be forced to emigrate abroad without failure, is maintained and stands at 10%.
According to Fernandez, “to face this present and this great uncertainty of the future, it will be necessary to develop a strong sense of intergenerational empathy. See interaction and collaboration between generations. A road map cannot be written with different opinions and approaches or with age differences, but with a common perspective.
