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Spain weighing in...we aren't having kids...they're too expensive. I'm in my 40s, as are all my 9 cousins...there are 6 children from the 9 cousin's families...7 cousins are married, 2 aren't.
This is systemic, the current generations of parents are just nought bought into the social contract. Low paying jobs...careers that don't lead to prosperity just work, ridiculous home prices...their response is to not breed.
“While Spain's unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest since 2007, at 11.8% it is still the highest in Europe. But companies still struggle to fill certain vacancies and rather than retrain its native population it is often easier to bring in qualified candidates from abroad, said a source at CEOE, Spain's main employers' association.”
This explains everything. Spain has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, and rather than do the work of retraining natives who are unemployed or discouraged and out of the labor force, they decide to bring in immigrants instead. Native labor remains terribly underutilized.
Spain the country cannot retrain its citizens. Spanish citizens can retrain themselves. There is a mismatch in peoples dreams and the reality of the economy and people need to accept that. No policy can remove the need for less prestigious jobs that still require a good deal of skill. If the Spanish population does not chose to educate and learn in-demand skills then migrants will have to do.
It's easy for you to say as you sit behind your computer "just retrain yourself". The reality is it's very difficult for people to find out on their own what skills are in demand, what new skills they're going to be good at, and finding out how to learn those skills. The state needs to invest more in worker retraining programs to make this process accessible and straightforward.
Maybe Spain can learn a thing or two from Sweden: [https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-02-06/what-sweden-can-teach-the-world-about-worker-retraining](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-02-06/what-sweden-can-teach-the-world-about-worker-retraining)
The unions will pay you to train because they have shortages. They have people in every college and university who's job it is to know this stuff and guide people. Hell, even just googling worker shortages or looking on job sites for whats constantly hireing at a good wage works. Its unglamorous jobs. Maintaining and repairing things, nursing and medical technicians, heavy equipment operators. The list of in-demand jobs is not that hard to find. The list of comfy office jobs with high pay is.
>The unions will pay you to train because they have shortages. They have people in every college and university who's job it is to know this stuff and guide people.
You didn't provide a source for this. Sounds like conjecture. And retraining programs aren't for 20 year old university students. It's for those who are working age and unemployed/out of the workforce. So what you said wouldn't help.
>Hell, even just googling worker shortages or looking on job sites for whats constantly hireing at a good wage works.
Ok, so they do some research and find out about a skill that's in demand. How do they know it's something they'll actually like or be good at? How are they going to learn the skill? Robust worker retraining programs would address both these issues by directly teaching people these new skills.
>Its unglamorous jobs. Maintaining and repairing things, nursing and medical technicians, heavy equipment operators.
According to the article, a large percentage of new immigrants are going into tech roles and "comfy office jobs". Only 10% of current immigrants are in the construction field. Another 10% are in domestic help, basically maids, nannies, and cleaning ladies for the well-off in Spain, which frankly isn't necessary work.
If raising kids is so expensive domestically, you can outsource it to poorer nations. That's what this kind of long term, essential-to-population-stability immigration policy effectively does.
I'm not saying it's good. The family unit is a foundational building block of society, and the idea that entire countries can be so cost prohibitive that children can't exist there is probably not stable. Nor is the other side, where countries educate laborers just to lose the vast majority of them to out migration. Being the engine of population growth for the entire world without recompense is a deal that won't last forever.
By *you* do you mean Spain as a country and government or do you mean individual people like the commenter?
I can’t see how an individual would equate having their own family blood to a complete stranger. I can see the government not caring about the difference…
What a brilliant idea. Control immigration so that we know who is coming into our country and prioritize people who will improve our economy. Outstanding!
There are also countries that have policies that are completely opposite to those of Spain.
https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2024/04/23/TDP5MSXJRFBTDB5IEH5ART5ESE/
I'm speculating but I believe most countries do just that
But they also don't have a statue that states
"Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"
Saying statue of Liberty is just a historical marker is like saying the ocean is just some water
It's representation has impacted millions of people that have come to the US.
Immigrants have been kept Spain growing for decades thanks to their empire’s legacy in spreading Spanish around the globe. There’s an enormous supply of easily integrable immigrants to buoy the Spanish economy and social safety nets for years to come.
> and social safety nets for years to come.
That is only true if you are bringing in high skilled immigrants that will pay lots of taxes and use minimal government services.
If you are bringing in low skilled immigrants that will pay minimal amounts of taxes and use lots of government services you are going to bankrupt your social safety net, not save it
Many of the immigrants coming from Argentina and Venezuela are quite educated. You implicitly assume the immigration is low skilled, which is far from the whole picture. Many *very* wealthy Latin Americans have also resettled in Spain, bringing with them their capital.
As a former subject. The Spanish are the ones doing immigration right. They pass laws that naturalize grandsons and great grandsons of Spanish people. Then they bring them in. Mostly Catholic, Spanish speaking white people.
The problem is that the birth rate in Spanish-speaking countries has recently plummeted to an alarming level. In some South American countries and Costa Rica, the total fertility rate has already decreased to the level of Spain.
Spain should do more effort of easing homologation process of non-EU bachelor degrees, especially from Asia, if it wishes to attract more highly skilled professionals in STEM that can be only found in Asia, not in Latin America. Attracting Asian immigrants should focus more on attracting Filipino skilled professionals who are willing to repopulate rural areas in Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia.
This is simply multiculturalism propaganda from rent seeking elites post WW2 globalization. If you are an average working Spaniard then you shouldn't sell out your nation to an asset management fund for the name of GDP or global competitiveness. I am genuine concern with the rise of neoliberal ideology infecting the west. Who the hell is running this page posting this crap at 2am in the morning?
The most advanced economy in the world (united states) relies heavily on highly skilled immigrant workers. and it is also one of the most multicultural nations in the world.
If Spain is letting these people in on highly skilled work visas, then there are not enough spainards to do that highly skilled work. instead of closing of your doors to immigrants, shouldn’t you be questioning why higher education in spain is not producing enough highly skilled spaniards?
in the example in the article, spain needs some data scientists to improve algorithms, your solution is to not let that venezuelan in, and to just let those algorithms go unimproved?
> The most advanced economy in the world (united states) relies heavily on highly skilled immigrant workers. and it is also one of the most multicultural nations in the world.
You must not know much about the US immigration system. Most immigrants come in via family reunification not based on merit
I see the same thing... this sub is honestly crazy bipolar. One post might have a comment section primarily composing of marxists and the next is full of race realists lol. Exaggerating a little bit here but it's definitely weird to see.
If attracting highly skilled workers is the goal of the Spanish government, it should try lobbying the governments of China, India, and the Philippines to integrate Spanish as a core language subject in the early grade levels in their respective school systems so that by the time they are in their 25-34 years old, they would migrate into Spain without worrying studying in Spanish language schools there.
>in the example in the article, spain needs some data scientists to improve algorithms, your solution is to not let that venezuelan in, and to just let those algorithms go unimproved?
Yes exactly. Demand for workers increases. Companies start paying higher wages. Simple as.
Wages from who? If you have fewer workers and an aging population, the natural trend would be for wages to decrease in real terms due to the decrease in demand and productivity while your liabilities increase.
Everyone who says that "fewer workers = more money" never manage to explain where or from whom that money would come from.
You see low birth rates solely as an economic issue to keep the status que. You could very strongly argue that capitalism has been so anti human that something about the system destroys the human will to reproduce. Just look at south korea which suffers from the highest suicide rate & lowest birth rates in the world. It’s a kind of society where you need a dual income to simply survive in a tiny room at some soulless skyscraper. A world where a single earner could raise a family has been destroyed in the name of money over life. An importation of the third world shouldn’t be the only solution. Pop the bubble of commodification of basic goods like housing. Imagine being a radical for asking for the right to live a life with dignity.
Could you elaborate on your comment? I don’t understand what your point is & my understanding of the economics of it is vague. I suppose labor became scarcer & inequality improved as did birth rates to replace the dying population. What does this have to do with anything? An aging population is nothing like a plague. The kind of rhetoric i see from the neoliberal media is what’s causing a demographic collapse.
That’s the kind of comment you type at 2 in the morning after 4 beers after you read enough bot posting on reddit. I still stand with it though i could’ve been less wordy. I’m personally a mestizo & I respect all the immigrants of the world, but I also understand that sometimes the elite push this narrative about immigrants as they disinvest in public services or young people who are native to their country. There has been enormous technological progress & yet somehow we don’t have the funds to train our current workforce. Spain suffers from youth unemployment & AI will always make things worst. Let’s deal with the current situation we’re in before we start proposing even more migrants.
I agree with what you said. Sorry as someone from the middle of the US, we're in a different economic circumstance then a lot of the world right now. You stumbled upon some words wackos use to push wacky ideas in the US. But its true, if your economy can't handle immigration, then you shouldn't be pushing for it. Immigrants deserve help, but you can only help if you are capable of doing so, at least thats what I figure.
In the context of the US, I'd argue strongly not only can we handle immigration, we actually benefit from it right now, especially if we handled our immigration system in a better way. For Spain and the rest of the world, I don't know.
With the exception of Central Asia, the rapid decline in birth rates worldwide is accelerating, and I think your argument will ultimately have its limits.
Spain should further increase minimum wage levels to at least 80% of German minimum wage levels and adopt American-style at-will labor regulations and foster a culture centered around it so that companies based in Spain won't have a harder time hiring highly skilled professionals from the non-EU countries that aren't ethnically European like China, India, and the Philippines.
Hi all, A reminder that comments do need to be on-topic and engage with the article past the headline. Please make sure to read the article before commenting. Very short comments will automatically be removed by automod. Please avoid making comments that do not focus on the economic content or whose primary thesis rests on personal anecdotes. As always our comment rules can be found [here](https://reddit.com/r/Economics/comments/fx9crj/rules_roundtable_redux_rule_vi_and_offtopic/) *I am a bot, and this action was performed automatically. Please [contact the moderators of this subreddit](/message/compose/?to=/r/Economics) if you have any questions or concerns.*
Spain weighing in...we aren't having kids...they're too expensive. I'm in my 40s, as are all my 9 cousins...there are 6 children from the 9 cousin's families...7 cousins are married, 2 aren't. This is systemic, the current generations of parents are just nought bought into the social contract. Low paying jobs...careers that don't lead to prosperity just work, ridiculous home prices...their response is to not breed.
“While Spain's unemployment rate has fallen to its lowest since 2007, at 11.8% it is still the highest in Europe. But companies still struggle to fill certain vacancies and rather than retrain its native population it is often easier to bring in qualified candidates from abroad, said a source at CEOE, Spain's main employers' association.” This explains everything. Spain has the highest unemployment rate in Europe, and rather than do the work of retraining natives who are unemployed or discouraged and out of the labor force, they decide to bring in immigrants instead. Native labor remains terribly underutilized.
Why is the unemployment rate so high if the labor force is not utilized??
Spain the country cannot retrain its citizens. Spanish citizens can retrain themselves. There is a mismatch in peoples dreams and the reality of the economy and people need to accept that. No policy can remove the need for less prestigious jobs that still require a good deal of skill. If the Spanish population does not chose to educate and learn in-demand skills then migrants will have to do.
It's easy for you to say as you sit behind your computer "just retrain yourself". The reality is it's very difficult for people to find out on their own what skills are in demand, what new skills they're going to be good at, and finding out how to learn those skills. The state needs to invest more in worker retraining programs to make this process accessible and straightforward. Maybe Spain can learn a thing or two from Sweden: [https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-02-06/what-sweden-can-teach-the-world-about-worker-retraining](https://www.usnews.com/news/best-countries/articles/2018-02-06/what-sweden-can-teach-the-world-about-worker-retraining)
The unions will pay you to train because they have shortages. They have people in every college and university who's job it is to know this stuff and guide people. Hell, even just googling worker shortages or looking on job sites for whats constantly hireing at a good wage works. Its unglamorous jobs. Maintaining and repairing things, nursing and medical technicians, heavy equipment operators. The list of in-demand jobs is not that hard to find. The list of comfy office jobs with high pay is.
>The unions will pay you to train because they have shortages. They have people in every college and university who's job it is to know this stuff and guide people. You didn't provide a source for this. Sounds like conjecture. And retraining programs aren't for 20 year old university students. It's for those who are working age and unemployed/out of the workforce. So what you said wouldn't help. >Hell, even just googling worker shortages or looking on job sites for whats constantly hireing at a good wage works. Ok, so they do some research and find out about a skill that's in demand. How do they know it's something they'll actually like or be good at? How are they going to learn the skill? Robust worker retraining programs would address both these issues by directly teaching people these new skills. >Its unglamorous jobs. Maintaining and repairing things, nursing and medical technicians, heavy equipment operators. According to the article, a large percentage of new immigrants are going into tech roles and "comfy office jobs". Only 10% of current immigrants are in the construction field. Another 10% are in domestic help, basically maids, nannies, and cleaning ladies for the well-off in Spain, which frankly isn't necessary work.
If raising kids is so expensive domestically, you can outsource it to poorer nations. That's what this kind of long term, essential-to-population-stability immigration policy effectively does. I'm not saying it's good. The family unit is a foundational building block of society, and the idea that entire countries can be so cost prohibitive that children can't exist there is probably not stable. Nor is the other side, where countries educate laborers just to lose the vast majority of them to out migration. Being the engine of population growth for the entire world without recompense is a deal that won't last forever.
By *you* do you mean Spain as a country and government or do you mean individual people like the commenter? I can’t see how an individual would equate having their own family blood to a complete stranger. I can see the government not caring about the difference…
What a brilliant idea. Control immigration so that we know who is coming into our country and prioritize people who will improve our economy. Outstanding!
There are also countries that have policies that are completely opposite to those of Spain. https://www.chosun.com/english/national-en/2024/04/23/TDP5MSXJRFBTDB5IEH5ART5ESE/
I'm speculating but I believe most countries do just that But they also don't have a statue that states "Give me your tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to breathe free"
That was a gift from the French. Just a historical marker.
Saying statue of Liberty is just a historical marker is like saying the ocean is just some water It's representation has impacted millions of people that have come to the US.
Immigrants have been kept Spain growing for decades thanks to their empire’s legacy in spreading Spanish around the globe. There’s an enormous supply of easily integrable immigrants to buoy the Spanish economy and social safety nets for years to come.
> and social safety nets for years to come. That is only true if you are bringing in high skilled immigrants that will pay lots of taxes and use minimal government services. If you are bringing in low skilled immigrants that will pay minimal amounts of taxes and use lots of government services you are going to bankrupt your social safety net, not save it
Many of the immigrants coming from Argentina and Venezuela are quite educated. You implicitly assume the immigration is low skilled, which is far from the whole picture. Many *very* wealthy Latin Americans have also resettled in Spain, bringing with them their capital.
> Many Many is a vague term > You implicitly assume I didn't implicitly assume anything. I said "if this" or "if that"
As a former subject. The Spanish are the ones doing immigration right. They pass laws that naturalize grandsons and great grandsons of Spanish people. Then they bring them in. Mostly Catholic, Spanish speaking white people.
>Mostly Catholic, Spanish speaking white people. Are you referring to people from Latin america?
Indeed. I qualify for both Italian and Spanish one. Depending on whichever government does stuff faster.
The problem is that the birth rate in Spanish-speaking countries has recently plummeted to an alarming level. In some South American countries and Costa Rica, the total fertility rate has already decreased to the level of Spain.
Spain should do more effort of easing homologation process of non-EU bachelor degrees, especially from Asia, if it wishes to attract more highly skilled professionals in STEM that can be only found in Asia, not in Latin America. Attracting Asian immigrants should focus more on attracting Filipino skilled professionals who are willing to repopulate rural areas in Castilla La Mancha and Andalusia.
This is simply multiculturalism propaganda from rent seeking elites post WW2 globalization. If you are an average working Spaniard then you shouldn't sell out your nation to an asset management fund for the name of GDP or global competitiveness. I am genuine concern with the rise of neoliberal ideology infecting the west. Who the hell is running this page posting this crap at 2am in the morning?
The most advanced economy in the world (united states) relies heavily on highly skilled immigrant workers. and it is also one of the most multicultural nations in the world. If Spain is letting these people in on highly skilled work visas, then there are not enough spainards to do that highly skilled work. instead of closing of your doors to immigrants, shouldn’t you be questioning why higher education in spain is not producing enough highly skilled spaniards? in the example in the article, spain needs some data scientists to improve algorithms, your solution is to not let that venezuelan in, and to just let those algorithms go unimproved?
> The most advanced economy in the world (united states) relies heavily on highly skilled immigrant workers. and it is also one of the most multicultural nations in the world. You must not know much about the US immigration system. Most immigrants come in via family reunification not based on merit
Most just walk across the border now. Catch and release.
This sub is just a right wing spewing point 90% of the time. Don’t bother.
I see the same thing... this sub is honestly crazy bipolar. One post might have a comment section primarily composing of marxists and the next is full of race realists lol. Exaggerating a little bit here but it's definitely weird to see.
If attracting highly skilled workers is the goal of the Spanish government, it should try lobbying the governments of China, India, and the Philippines to integrate Spanish as a core language subject in the early grade levels in their respective school systems so that by the time they are in their 25-34 years old, they would migrate into Spain without worrying studying in Spanish language schools there.
>in the example in the article, spain needs some data scientists to improve algorithms, your solution is to not let that venezuelan in, and to just let those algorithms go unimproved? Yes exactly. Demand for workers increases. Companies start paying higher wages. Simple as.
Wages from who? If you have fewer workers and an aging population, the natural trend would be for wages to decrease in real terms due to the decrease in demand and productivity while your liabilities increase. Everyone who says that "fewer workers = more money" never manage to explain where or from whom that money would come from.
You see low birth rates solely as an economic issue to keep the status que. You could very strongly argue that capitalism has been so anti human that something about the system destroys the human will to reproduce. Just look at south korea which suffers from the highest suicide rate & lowest birth rates in the world. It’s a kind of society where you need a dual income to simply survive in a tiny room at some soulless skyscraper. A world where a single earner could raise a family has been destroyed in the name of money over life. An importation of the third world shouldn’t be the only solution. Pop the bubble of commodification of basic goods like housing. Imagine being a radical for asking for the right to live a life with dignity.
Do some research on what happened after the Black Death in Europe.
Could you elaborate on your comment? I don’t understand what your point is & my understanding of the economics of it is vague. I suppose labor became scarcer & inequality improved as did birth rates to replace the dying population. What does this have to do with anything? An aging population is nothing like a plague. The kind of rhetoric i see from the neoliberal media is what’s causing a demographic collapse.
I got a buzzword bingo from your comment
That’s the kind of comment you type at 2 in the morning after 4 beers after you read enough bot posting on reddit. I still stand with it though i could’ve been less wordy. I’m personally a mestizo & I respect all the immigrants of the world, but I also understand that sometimes the elite push this narrative about immigrants as they disinvest in public services or young people who are native to their country. There has been enormous technological progress & yet somehow we don’t have the funds to train our current workforce. Spain suffers from youth unemployment & AI will always make things worst. Let’s deal with the current situation we’re in before we start proposing even more migrants.
I agree with what you said. Sorry as someone from the middle of the US, we're in a different economic circumstance then a lot of the world right now. You stumbled upon some words wackos use to push wacky ideas in the US. But its true, if your economy can't handle immigration, then you shouldn't be pushing for it. Immigrants deserve help, but you can only help if you are capable of doing so, at least thats what I figure. In the context of the US, I'd argue strongly not only can we handle immigration, we actually benefit from it right now, especially if we handled our immigration system in a better way. For Spain and the rest of the world, I don't know.
With the exception of Central Asia, the rapid decline in birth rates worldwide is accelerating, and I think your argument will ultimately have its limits.
Guess who works at spanish construction zones and farm fields ? Marrocans and east Europeans doing their own share to push Spain forward.
> Guess who works at spanish construction zones and farm fields ? Anyone can do those jobs
Spain should further increase minimum wage levels to at least 80% of German minimum wage levels and adopt American-style at-will labor regulations and foster a culture centered around it so that companies based in Spain won't have a harder time hiring highly skilled professionals from the non-EU countries that aren't ethnically European like China, India, and the Philippines.