Online
classes
, schools closed, projects that fail, first jobs that fail and jobs increasingly precarious: the economic crisis caused by the pandemic is hitting especially young people. For the most hyper-connected generation, the centennials or generation Z -as those born between 1996 and 2010 are known-, the coronavirus has forced them to turn their lives over to the virtual world due to quarantines and has left their futures and plans up in the air . According to an investigation by the Cuso International organization based on United Nations data, one in six people between the ages of 18 and 29 has been left without a job in Latin America and the Caribbean since the start of the pandemic, while many others saw their jobs they became more and more precarious. What's more,many students were forced to leave their studies due to lack of resources or the inability to follow them on the internet.
But if the pandemic has hit all nations to a greater or lesser extent, the output is much more unequal depending on the place of residence and social class. In the United States, the return to total normality is looming close with a massive vaccination plan and a cash injection into the economy in the form of aid. There, young people, like the rest of the population, begin to see the light. In most of the region, however, the impact does not seem to have an immediate end and entry into the labor market for those seeking their first job is more difficult than ever. The response to this situation is also different depending on the present that each country is experiencing, the age of its crises and the amount of unrest accumulated in their societies:While in Colombia and Peru, young people have taken to the streets to lead protests that have crystallized social discontent in recent months, others manage as they can to get ahead and adapt.
🇺🇸 United States: return to the parents' house
As cold as they are, the statistics make headlines that mark the history of a nation.
The pandemic that practically paralyzed the planet at the beginning of 2020 pushed millions of young adults (18-29 years old) to move with their parents, either because the universities where they studied closed their doors and established
online
classes
or because they suddenly saw each other jobless.
According to data from the Pew Research Center, before 2020, the highest value on record is 1940, towards the end of the Great Depression, when 48% of young adults were forced to return to their parents' homes due to the economic debacle that was also worldwide and that resulted in high unemployment rates, the collapse of the middle class, the fall of consumption and an unprecedented social crisis.
As of July 2020, 52% of young adults resided with one or two of their parents.
In 2010, that figure was around 40% and in 2000 it barely touched 36%, always according to data from the Pew Research Center.
That segment of the population between 18 and 29, newly graduates or professionals at the beginning of their careers, found that companies dispensed with their services from one day to the next and their plans were parked.
Julian Wallentin, 23, in Chicago, United States Courtesy
Nearly four million people graduated from college in the 2019-2020 academic year, according to the US Department of Education. Some saw some job offers canceled while many others felt cowed and reticent at the new landscape. of the labor market that the pandemic was leaving.
“At first we took it as a long spring break,” says Julian Wallentin, a 23-year-old who just turned 23 who managed to graduate in 2020, during one of the worst peaks of the pandemic. In the final stretch of his senior year at Northwestern University in Chicago, he began isolation and
online
education
. "There were no classes, we had no responsibilities, it was almost exciting." Until the harsh reality caught up with him and the companions with whom he shared an apartment. Several of them had to return to their parents' home. Wallentin stayed until July. There was no graduation party. Proud families ran out of photography for posterity. No one was able to throw their cap in the air as is traditionally done in US universities.
"The biggest fear was when we could see our families again and if the job offers we had would continue," says this young man who, until he moved to Chicago as a university student, grew up and was educated in the nation's capital. In his case, the company that had signed him had branches in San Francisco, Washington DC and they planned to open in Chicago. For a short time, Wallentin thought he would join the many others whose contracts were canceled, as happened to two friends. Or that he would be relocated, as happened to a colleague who already settled in Seattle had to move to Saint Louis forced by the economic rigors dictated by the pandemic. It was not so. Graduated in economics and environment, Wallentin began his professional career at the age of 22 in August of last year.
The situation has been more difficult for graduates in other sectors.
As a young aspiring journalist recounted in
The New York Times
, the fact that nearly 36,000 reporters had been fired or put on unpaid leave, many of them professional veterans, was more than a cause for discouragement.
More information
The challenge of educating in Latin America during the coronavirus pandemic
The aftermath of the pandemic on adolescent mental health
A battle for mental health must be added to the fight against the pandemic to preserve public health, since one of the groups that have seen their lives most affected in times of coronavirus have been young people due to the cancellation of their face-to-face classes in some defining years of his life; lack of social interaction and isolation. According to a June 2020 report by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention, out of a total of 5,470 young adults between the ages of 18 and 24 who participated in a study, one in four respondents had considered suicide and a similar rate had started. to take medication to cope with the harshness of the pandemic.
Julian Walletin is aware that, in his case, luck ended up defining his story.
"Of course, I ended up getting COVID-19 a week before Thanksgiving," he explains.
It wasn't serious: he just lost his sense of smell.
But I have a really bad time with the second dose of the vaccine.
"That was strong," he concedes.
Today he feels lucky and is about to celebrate his 23rd birthday without masks or restrictions.
🇲🇽 Mexico: the leap into the void of precariousness
Sara Zapién was surprised by the pandemic at the age of 29 and in her best professional moment.
The first university student in the family, SapĂn was responsible for the digital marketing area of ​​a company that imported Italian products.
He charged 25,000 pesos a month, about 1,200 dollars.
A good salary.
Soon enough, however, his boss cut it to 12,500 and then 3,500, the minimum allowed by law and insufficient to live in Mexico City.
He had to radically cut down on grocery expenses, throw away savings, and put off a master's degree that he had been planning to do for a long time.
So she endured half a year until she was fired in March, forced to accept severance pay three times less than her due.
"The crisis tied my hands," he says.
Sara Zapién, 29, in Mexico City Courtesy
At the end of 2020, a loss of 672,000 jobs was reported among the population up to 24 years of age compared to the period before the pandemic, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Geography. "They are the first to be fired, in part due to the lower severance payments that companies have to pay, but also the last to be rehired," says economist Marcelo Delajara, from the Espinosa Yglesias Studies Center. "The increase in unemployment has been greater in absolute terms among young people, who were already starting from a high rate." The services sector, its main employer, has been the hardest hit, with an annual fall of 5% in February.
The rise of digital platforms, fueled by confinement, has provided partial relief for some young people. This is the case of Johan Orozco, a 20-year-old illustrator. He sells logos and designs that he displays on his Instagram account to all types of businesses, from chilaquile stores to dance groups. The covid has not been bad for him. Before I received an order a month and now there are three on average. "We all worry, but digital can be done from home and in Mexico it is growing a lot," says Orozco. "You are going to get a job, no matter how poorly paid it is."
Indeed, the increase in precariousness is the other side of the crisis. “Typically, it affects young people more because when they enter the world of work they remain informal for a long time,” says Delajara. Mexico also does not have unemployment insurance. After running out of social security, Sara Zapién tries to get by with freelance jobs, but she earns a fifth of what she used to and is fed up. "I want to go back to the formal market and have social security," he says. “I have had some interviews, but nothing has materialized. Now there is a lot of competition ”.
Faced with the increase in youth unemployment, the Government has not presented new actions beyond the Youth Building the Future program, which already existed before the pandemic.
This initiative has given 322,000 young people training scholarships in companies since 2019 and, during the crisis, it has been a temporary refuge.
However, the scholarship is only 4,310 pesos a month, about $ 215, and when it ends the apprentices are often out of work.
The Superior Audit of the Federation stated in February that the program's indicators are "insufficient" to assess whether the training has resulted in greater job placement.
🇨🇴 Colombia: the youth revolt
Colombian youth have been out on the streets for more than two weeks. One more time. It faces a hostile environment, exacerbated by the economic meltdown of the coronavirus. These young people are the main protagonists of the protests that have cornered the Government of Iván Duque, forcing it to withdraw the failed tax reform proposal that initially triggered the mobilizations of the so-called national strike, which now champion multiple causes.
The pandemic has triggered discontent.
Colombia, which is going through a rebound in infections, suffered a 6.8% drop in its GDP in 2020, the largest since it has records.
Poverty climbed to 42.5% and unemployment to 15.9%, but youth unemployment is even higher, close to 25%.
In the midst of the confinement measures, face-to-face education has been at a minimum for more than a year, with schools and universities closed.
“Many feel excluded, without opportunities, without hope.
The control of the pandemic implied an excessive burden on them, exacerbated the problems of exclusion and marginalization ”, wrote in this newspaper Alejandro Gaviria, the rector of the University of Los Andes.
Crowd of people, mostly young people in front of the Monument to the Heroes in Bogotá.Camilo Rozo
Political leaders from across the spectrum have agreed on at least that. “The ones that need to be discussed with are those who are on the streets, who are young people, who for the most part neither study nor work,” said the mayor of Bogotá, Claudia López. "The people who are on the street today are the popular youth, the neighborhood youth," said the leftist presidential candidate Gustavo Petro. "We are clear that we must prioritize a series of interventions that are necessary to generate a vocation of hope and the future for our youth," said Duque during his visit to Cali, the epicenter of the episodes of violence.
"There is an effort by students to get out of our bubble and to also talk about the problems of the rest of the youth," says Jennifer Pedraza, 25, a student representative and member of the strike committee, which groups together the organizations that convene demonstrations and negotiates with the Executive. They are united by disenchantment, rejection of the political class and a deep malaise in front of this Government, the economic results and their prospects for life.
Young people had already been in the front line during the protests at the end of 2019, when they inspired society, and are leading this new, more chaotic cycle of mobilization, which has disrupted all kinds of activities. Thousands of young people, many covered with the yellow, blue and red flag, have gathered almost daily at the monument to Los Héroes, in Bogotá, where they sing songs of “resistance”. "Although it is my right, I go out to march in fear," says Dayana Valero's poster, referring to the police repression. "I'm leaving because I'm tired of living in a corrupt Colombia ... people are dying of hunger, they don't have anything to eat or where to live, and the only thing they can think of is to increase taxes in the midst of a pandemic," laments this 26-year-old law student."What they are doing is so terrible that we prefer to go out and risk catching covid in a country where there are not even ICUs," he said.
Government attrition is even more pronounced among young people, and positions in the face of social protest show a generation gap. 65% of people between 15 and 35 years old believe that the leaders of the national strike represent young people, and 72% that the strike will have a positive result, according to a study by the National Consulting Center (CNC) . Youth employment, poverty alleviation and free higher education are the most pressing issues that they believe the government must resolve. In the midst of this difficult dialogue, Duque himself announced this week that students in strata 1, 2 and 3 - the most vulnerable half in the Colombian system - will have access to higher education for free from next semester. "I want to study / to change society",protesters keep chanting.
🇧🇷 Brazil: leaving school to reach the queue of unemployment without experience
VitĂłria VarjĂŁo, 19, has been trying to get off the unemployment list for almost a year and a half.
The exercise of searching for job offers on the internet and sending the resume is daily and increasingly frustrating.
The young woman is in a hurry.
She, her two younger brothers and their parents live in a house in the HeliĂłpolis favela, the largest in SĂŁo Paulo, and currently depend only on their father's income.
“Today I can't even choose what I want to work on, whatever comes I accept.
It was not easy to find an opportunity, but with the pandemic, commerce and companies are going bankrupt, it is almost impossible, "he laments.
The crisis generated by the covid-19 pandemic has had a strong impact on the Brazilian labor market, but it has mainly harmed workers between 18 and 24 years old, such as VitĂłria, according to a study by Ipea (Institute of Applied Economic Research ).
The unemployment rate in this age group went from 23.8% in the fourth quarter of 2019 to 29.8% in the same period of 2020. Almost 4.1 million young people are looking for work in a country with a average unemployment rate of 14.2%.
VitĂłria VarjĂŁo, 19, has been trying to get out of unemployment for almost a year and a half Camila Svenson
The economist Maria Andreia Lameiras, author of the study, believes that the health crisis has increased the existing differences in the labor market. “Young people have always had this difficulty finding work, largely due to lack of experience. But the pandemic worsens this picture because there is a large movement of unemployed, many of them experienced and qualified, who are available. Young people will have even more difficulties to compete when the market heats up, ”he explains.
The pandemic brought an additional problem. With the opening and closing of schools and universities, many dropped out of educational institutions, jeopardizing their grades. In the case of Vitória, the economic situation of his family forced him to leave the university where he was studying Business Administration. “As I was left without an internship and without a job, we had no way to pay the monthly fee of 320 reais (approximately 50 euros). In fact, I couldn't even pay the last monthly payments, ”he says.
Difficulty entering the market also generates a loss of productivity in the race. “When the young person does not find a job or accepts something lower than his qualification, the situation generates discouragement and loss of quality of work. He does not gain experience to advance professionally, ”says economist Lameiras. Studies show that precarious work early in their careers can compromise the salary of these professionals throughout their careers, a phenomenon called the “scar effect”.
Nathalia Lima, a 24-year-old recently graduated in education, has been trying to find a teaching assistant position for months, but the only offers she has been offered are far from her goal. “Now, during the pandemic, I managed to give a student some tutoring, but since it was only a few classes a week, I ended up having to take a job with a fixed babysitting salary. But after a while I quit and I'm still looking for places in schools, which is my goal, "he says.
While Nathália and Vitória continue to insist on finding a job, many young people have already given up.
The second age group that has entered the most inactivity, after the elderly, is that of people between 18 and 24 years old.
“Inactivity is very worrying because many end up not returning.
They are the famous ni-ni, who neither work nor study, many girls who take care of housework ”, explains Lameiras.
The outlook for this year, according to Ipea, is that, despite the expectation of a slight acceleration in economic activity and the expansion of vaccination against covid-19, which would help mitigate the impacts of the health crisis, the vacancies generated will not be enough to supply the unemployed and those who gave up looking for a job.
🇵🇪 Peru: more and more young people in the air
In Peru, the economy fell 11% in 2021 due to restrictions due to the health emergency and the difficulty of the State to distribute subsidies. Young people are among the hardest hit by having had to drop out of school or have lost their job. The situation for the future is serious, says the National Secretary for Youth, Noelia Chávez: "If you have not been able to develop skills and have not had income, you have a large population becoming precarious," laments the official of the entity belonging to the Ministry of Education .
As reported to this newspaper by the National Superintendency of University Education (Sunedu), the rate of interruption of university studies used to be 10%, but in 2020 it doubled. According to Chávez, 174,544 students dropped out of their education during the first semester of last year. "The desertion has increased with the closure of universities and the need to go to work to find financial support," explains the official. To this must be added the informality of work, which was already 78% among young people in 2019, and has continued to increase, and those who neither study nor work rose from 19% in 2019 to 45% today. “They are a bit in the air. With problems of access or reintegration to education and work and becoming precarious because they cannot access formal or informal jobs. In the future the outlook is black ”,warns the 29-year-old sociologist.
Young workers take part in a protest against the quarantine. Martin Mejia / AP
It was precisely this sector of the population that drove the protests at the end of last year that led to the departure of President Manuel Merino from power in the midst of the pandemic. Before the crisis caused by the coronavirus, less than 30% of young Peruvians were studying higher technical or university studies. As a result of the health emergency and desertion, the National Scholarship Program reported an “unprecedented demand”. In addition, the national youth secretary highlights another type of impact on women: violence and discrimination. “Line 100 (emergency of violence) was more accessible than other aid services because it did not require physical presence. In 2020, they attended 235,791 consultations -almost double the previous year-: of these, 58,224 consultations were made by young people: a quarter of the total ”,Chávez warns.
Another tragedy faced by young people in Peru, especially in cities on the north coast and in Lima, where the indicators of the pandemic are worse, is that they must look for beds in intensive care units for their relatives or buy oxygen, scarce since January in the country. To do this, they constantly organize raffles that they broadcast on social media. The most serious case that the press has disclosed is that of Hellen Ñañez, 28 years old, who has lost 13 family members to COVID and is facing a debt of more than $ 27,000 that she spent on medicines, refilling bottles of oxygen, transportation and burial. The Psychology student, a resident of the city of Ica, sells soaps at the door of a hospital and collects about $ 15 a day. “I'm seeing how I manage. I have to save my dad, support my daughter,pay my debt. I am not going to abandon my dream of studying, I am going to do what would have made the family proud, "he told the newspaper.
The Republic
.
🇦🇷 Argentina: young women, the most affected
When the pandemic reached Argentina, the country was already dragging on two years of economic crisis, with a hit job market.
The young population, which accounts for 20% of the total, had great difficulties in accessing and staying in formal and quality jobs, but the situation worsened much more as a result of the strict confinement decreed by the Government of Alberto Fernández to reduce the circulation of the coronavirus.
In the second quarter of 2020, with much of the economic activity paralyzed, the unemployment rate grew to 13.1%, the highest since 2005. According to data from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Indec), unemployment youth soared more than that of any other age group. Among women aged 14 to 29, the most affected group, those without work went from 23.9% in March of that year to 28.5% in June. Among men, unemployment increased from 18.6% to 22.7%.
Fernando GarcĂa and his sister, Marisa, aged 27 and 29 respectively, take turns driving their grandfather's car with which they act as Uber. "I would like my sister to work for something else, but there is no work, the stores don't hire anyone because nobody buys or buys only online and I can't work in the morning because I'm studying," says Fernando, who hopes to have received lab technician in one year.
For both, it is a temporary occupation, with which to overcome the hardest part of a crisis that this time is not only Argentine but global. “We are used to searching for it. My grandfather hardly used the car and with the pandemic less, because he locked himself at home, so we adapted it for this. But labor dropped a lot, people don't have a handle. Yesterday in three hours I had two trips ”, laments Fernando.
“The Argentine labor market is very heterogeneous and unequal and the situation varies greatly according to the sector of activity, geographic and demographic.
The pandemic widened the inequalities that already existed, ”says Luciana Petrone, analyst for Cippec's social protection program.
Petrone points out that in Argentina the majority of young people have informal jobs, which leaves them outside the social protection network that those with a registered job have.
A mother and her daughter ask for the reopening of classes due to the confinement measures.
in Buenos Aires.
Juan Ignacio Roncoroni / EFE
In turn, unemployment among young women is more than double that of the general and the gender gap increased even more in 2020. For Petrone, one of the reasons for this disadvantage is that they often fall on them with domestic and care tasks unpaid, having to take care of other family members, such as younger siblings, or the house, while their parents work.
Women perform 76% of this type of task compared to 24% that men do, according to official data.
Subscribe here
to the
EL PAÍS América
newsletter
and receive all the informative keys of the current situation in the region.