Alejandra Olcese
Updated Monday, March 25, 2024-01:47
Misalignment The problem of 'titulitis': 83% of hospitality employees have higher vocational training or a university degree
Four out of every ten
people in Spain have a
higher qualification
- higher vocational training or university degree - compared to an average proportion of
three out of ten in the European Union
, which causes our country to have the
highest
overqualification
rate in the Union. and the second highest
unemployment rate
for this group, only behind Greece.
According to Eurostat
data
,
7.4% of the population aged 20 to 64
in Spain with higher education was unemployed in 2023
,
compared to an average of 3.8% in the EU. Only Greece surpasses us, with a rate of 8.3% for this group.
"Spain is the European country with
the most overqualification
, understood as the percentage of employed higher education graduates who are employed in jobs below their training. Almost
36% of Spanish higher education graduates
perform
low-skilled tasks
," the Foundation states. Knowledge and Development (CYD) in its latest report.
In addition to exceeding the average in the proportion of overqualified people, our country also has a larger
population that only has compulsory education
: 36% compared to 20.5% in the EU, which means that between both segments there is a layer with medium studies too small.
45.2% of the European population has post-compulsory non-tertiary studies, compared to only 23.1% of Spaniards. Of them,
35.3%
in the case of the EU have a
medium-grade FP
, compared to
only 10% in Spain.
The low penetration of FP in our country is one of the
concerns
of legislators, who have approved reforms in recent years to try to promote it and give it added value with its
dual
modality . The German system, where it has a lot of penetration, is a model to follow for our country, as well as the good practices that have been implemented for years in some communities such as the Basque Country.
In addition to solving this lack of average graduates, who are precisely those most in demand by companies, our country must
redirect the vocation of higher graduates
. The CYD study shows that those university courses in which we have a much higher proportion of graduates than the EU average are precisely those that are most linked to
public employment,
such as education (20.1% of university graduates in Spain they are in this race compared to 9.7% in the EU) or health and well-being (16.5% compared to 14%). It is no coincidence that 23% of young people aged 18 to 34 are preparing or have prepared for competitive exams in our country, nor that 32.1% are thinking about doing so.
Other disciplines such as
engineering, industry and construction
- which are precisely those that are creating the most jobs - are chosen by only
10% of university students in Spain
, compared to 14.2% in the EU. In business, administration and law, the proportion is 18.9% in Spain and 24.7% in the EU; and in Information and Communication Technologies only 2.5% of students enroll here, compared to 4% in the EU, according to data from the report.
"Compared to the EU, Spain clearly has a lower percentage of employed higher graduates employed as
science, engineering and ICT
professionals , as well as commerce and administration professionals. The Spanish productive structure is not capable of generating sufficient
highly qualified positions
that would be needed to absorb the higher graduates who graduate from the educational system. To match the level of production of higher graduates in Spain and place ourselves at the European average, it would be necessary to increase the proportion of high-skilled jobs by at least 13 points. high qualification (at the level of France)", explains
Montse Álvarez
, from the technical office of the CYD Foundation.
Evolution in recent years
Despite continuing to be on the podium in the EU in terms of unemployment rate, it has improved a lot in recent years, something that can also be seen if we analyze the groups by level of training.
According to the EPA, the unemployment rate of the population with
higher education
reached
15.8% in 2014
, practically double that of now. It has also decreased greatly for those who have Compulsory Secondary Education, from 25% to 12.7%; and that of those who only have Primary Education, from 39% to 22.6%.
Compared to the worst years after the 2008 crisis, the unemployment rate has decreased in almost all segments, but it is observed for those who do not have any level of education - classified as
illiterate
, by the EPA - since 2021 there has been
an increase in its unemployment rate
to
36%,
due to the greater degree of
complexity
required by most professions. According to Human Resources consultants, it is increasingly common for low-skilled jobs, such as waiters or warehouse workers, to require languages or basic knowledge of new technologies.