Those over 50 and those under 24 are driving the job market: “Most of my friends work”
Eva Pérez finished her university degree in 2023. “I studied chemical engineering. When I finished, I did a one-year internship at a company, which lasted until July last year. Once the summer of 2024 was over, in October, I found a job at another company and I have been there ever since,” says the 24-year-old from Madrid. She has a permanent contract at a company dedicated to renewable energies , just a few months after finishing her studies. Marlene Sarmiento, 60, also found work last year, in her case in a town in Cáceres: “In my country, Colombia, I worked both as a journalist and in sales, but here I can't get those kinds of jobs. Last year I started a new job caring for an elderly lady,” she says.
These two women, with such different profiles, are in the population groups that grew the most in number of workers in 2024, according to year-end data from the Active Population Survey . Of the 468,000 jobs created, 104,000 corresponded to those under 24 years of age and 328,000 to those over 50. These figures take on even more relevance when comparing these advances with how many employees there are in these cohorts, as Francisco Mesonero, general director of the Adecco Foundation, highlights: “Those under 24 years of age represent only 6% of the workforce, but have contributed 22% of new jobs. Those over 50 years of age represent 35% but generate 70%.”
The predominance of these age groups is also reflected in the percentage growth: the 16-19 age group experienced the greatest relative increase, at 17%, while those aged 20-24 grew by 8%; those aged 50-54 grew by 5%, almost double the average, and those aged 65-69 grew by 12%.
Marcel Jansen, a labour market expert at the Foundation for Applied Economic Studies (Fedea), emphasises the importance of demographics in explaining part of this data: “If you look at employee flows, older people hardly change jobs. A significant part of the increase in employment among them is simply due to ageing, because there are more people in those age groups.” Mesonero sums it up like this: “Our population pyramid is becoming less and less of a pyramid [more young people at the bottom, fewer older people at the top]. It’s a top. And I think companies have begun to realise that senior talent is the most numerous, and that they should take advantage of it .” He believes that, given the ageing of the population, “companies that do not invest in older people will not be sustainable over time.”
Another important variable to understand this phenomenon is the employment rate, the ratio between the total number of people and those who work. When broken down by age, it can be seen that the rate for young people and older people has increased significantly in the last year. “People who are now around 50 years old work more than those who preceded them. As they get older, this increases the employment rate for these age groups,” explains Jansen. One of the keys to this increase is the growing participation of women in the labour market, a development exemplified by Mariola García: “Out of my 51 years, I have been working in a department store for 26. I do get the feeling that there is quite a lot of employment lately,” explains this worker from Molina de Segura (Murcia).
Mariola perceives that there are more and more young people among her colleagues, a group driven by the “procyclical moment of the Spanish economy”, according to the confederal secretary of Youth of CC OO, Adrià Junyent. “These positive figures are explained by the fact that Spain is the engine of growth in Europe ”, says this trade unionist. But he warns that, although in times of prosperity employment among young people improves strongly, at the same time it is very sensitive to recessionary periods. For example, because they are the cheapest employees to fire . “We are concerned that many jobs will be destroyed again if the global economy slows down”, says Junyent.
His counterpart at UGT, Eduardo Magaldi, highlights other circumstances that boost youth employment: “I believe that the labour reform, which puts an end to unjustified temporary contracts , helps many young people who previously entered and left the labour market to now have a more stable career. In addition, many specific positions are being created aimed at new qualifications, which are not filled by older people.” “Many new positions require digital skills that young people are more proficient in,” Mesonero adds, while Jansen highlights the sharp fall in educational dropouts and the reinforcement of vocational training.
Among the qualifications with very good job placement is the one taken by 22-year-old Raúl Julián from Madrid: “I studied a Vocational Training in automation and industrial robotics. I finished high school, with the qualification in hand, and found work in a pharmaceutical company.” He only applied for two job offers on a digital platform. “After 15 minutes, I got a call from one of them for the interview.” He says that friends who did other FP are facing more problems, “forced to work through Temporary Employment Agencies,” but that colleagues with the same training “have found jobs quickly and with permanent contracts.” “Most of my friends are working,” he concludes.
This is a similar impression to that of Eva, the engineer working in renewable energies, another booming sector. “It has always been said that if you study engineering it is difficult to find work. And it is true that I have not had any problems. I think I have been lucky, because you never know what will become of you.” Like Raúl, she sees that most of her friends “are not having too much trouble, they are finding work in their field.”
But this is not the situation for all young people: Spain has a 25% youth unemployment rate (among those under 25 years of age), the highest rate in Europe and ten points higher than the European average. It has improved a lot compared to the worst of the long crisis that began in 2008, when around half were unemployed , but there is still much room for improvement. This is how Darío Fernández, 22, sees it, who has not found it easy to find work after his university studies, a degree in business management and administration in the digital field: “I got a job related to what I studied last year. Both me and my fellow students have had a hard time finding internships, and work has been even more complicated.” This man from Madrid, who previously worked in hospitality and as a delivery driver, says that the search is being even more difficult for acquaintances who have studied other degrees: “I have friends who studied journalism and they can’t find work at all. It’s not easy for us.”
Colombian Marlene has not seen any chance of getting a job as a journalist or any other highly qualified occupation, for which she is prepared: “It was very difficult for me to get the papers, everything in terms of migration is very difficult in Spain . Since I arrived in 2019, I have only found care work.” This sector, again due to the profound ageing of the Spanish population, is one of those that projects the greatest growth in the coming years. “I am happy, I have adapted very well in my town, Cabezuela, where rents are much more affordable than in the big cities. And although I am happy, I see it as impossible to change sectors. Migrants of my age are only wanted for these jobs ,” she says.
Although the data show an increasing role for migrants in skilled sectors, Marlene is not wrong in pointing out that they face more barriers to accessing them. They suffer more overqualification, lower salaries and less stability, despite their importance in job creation in 2024 : of the 468,000 new jobs, 190,000 correspond to foreigners. That is, although they are 15% of the workforce, they provide 41% of new jobs. Even more important is the role of those with dual nationality, who, at 6%, account for 47% of new jobs.
Each group has its own particular problems, which are piled up on top of each other depending on the profile. For Marlene, in addition to the barriers she faces as a migrant woman, there are those inherent to her age, 60 years old. “There is a lot of talk about youth unemployment, but at that age there is room to reintegrate. For older people it is sometimes alarming, they do not have a job to return to,” says Junyent, an argument supported by Jansen: “When you look at the data on long-term unemployment, you see that it is concentrated among older people. In general they are less likely to lose their job than young people, but they have fewer opportunities to get another one. It is a big problem.” Mesonero, from Adecco, adds a positive nuance: he observes a greater propensity of these unemployed veterans to change sector, to gain skills with which to reinvent themselves.
It is something that Mariola, a 51-year-old retail employee, has sometimes thought about: “If I wanted to be an administrator and work from Monday to Friday.” Another idea that is on her mind is retirement, the number of years until she reaches it that she sees on the horizon: “At 51 years old, it is already very difficult for me to get to the end of my shift, it is very tiring. Whether you like it or not, your body is not the same as it was 20 years ago and it shows. I don’t think it is right that they raised the age to 67, at 65 it was already fine. If you push me, at 63 it would be better.” The Spanish labour market is increasingly made up of more people in circumstances like those described by this woman, with the implications that this has on productivity, temporary disability or available labour . Those over 50 are now 35% of the workforce, compared to 19% at the beginning of the century.
EL PAÍS
