Spain's Brain Drain: Causes and Consequences for Graduates

Cause and Effect: Spain's Brain Drain Phenomenon

How many of you are planning to move abroad once you have finished your degree? Many students start thinking of working abroad after finishing their degree. This situation has been seen in Spain over the last two decades. Millions of similar cases are seen every day among young people, a phenomenon called Brain Drain, in which highly skilled professionals migrate to other countries in order to find a job.

Impact of the Economic Crisis

The Brain Drain phenomenon hit Spain ten years ago with the economic crisis. To start with, the first five years were critical for the financial situation of the country, leaving 3.6 million unemployed people as the labour market collapsed, as Público states.

Moreover, it reduced the average family income and left Spain with a huge public debt from which it is still recovering. Hence, this led to 87,000 Spanish professionals being forced to move to other European countries between 2007 and 2017, according to La Vanguardia.

Primary Motives for Emigration

Low-paid jobs and the difficulty of finding suitable employment are primary motives of this phenomenon. In fact, Spain is one of the countries in the European Union where most post-graduate students have low-qualified jobs; moreover, these jobs pay the youth the worst.

In addition, as La Vanguardia maintains:

• 30% of university students do not find a job after graduating.
• Having high qualifications does not guarantee economic stability, nor does productivity ensure a higher salary, according to eldiaio.es.

Insufficient Investment in Research

Insufficient money investments and relevance in research and development is an additional cause of the phenomenon. In the first place, Spain has never been a leading country in research and still continues to be a bad country for investigation. As La Razón states, the level of investigation in the country is equivalent to that of fifteen years ago, making it difficult to reach a higher position.

As a result, young scientists—more than 12,000 since 2010—moved to other EU countries such as Germany, which has one of the highest levels of investigation.

Conclusion on Spain's Situation

In summary, the Brain Drain is affecting countries all over Europe, especially Spain. Consequently, Spain’s brain drain is one of the worst in western Europe. To tell the truth, Spain’s situation will not change until measures are taken by the government and politicians to reduce the high number of unemployment in the country and the low salaries mainly caused by the crisis—main reasons for dreaming to work abroad, as many students desire, including myself.