“Pensioner offers €5,000 to the company that will employ his out-of-work son, who is qualified, responsible, hard-working, and has a good professional background; salary negotiable according to contract on offer, absolute privacy required.”
So read a recent classified advertisement in a local newspaper in Zaragoza, in northern Spain. The ad reflects the financial desperation of many Spanish families despite a touted macroeconomic recovery.
"I thought of €5,000 because it's a round number, but I'm willing to pay more," the pensioner, named as "Antonio", told El País newspaper.
His son, who is 39, has been unemployed for a year having worked previously in IT, catering and the hotel sector, but always on a temporary contract. He is married with a five-year-old child and will stop receiving unemployment benefit in a year, as is normal under Spanish law.
The advertisement, which appeared in El Heraldo de Aragón newspaper last weekend, was an imaginative attempt by Antonio to help his son get back to work.
“I’ve seen him overwhelmed, desperate. I was embarrassed to take out this ad,” he said. “He got very angry with me, he didn’t want people in Zaragoza to know it was him . He thought it was undignified, or even shameful, but after talking to him for a long time about it, he eventually said: ‘You’re the best dad in the world.’”
Antonio said that he had received about 20 inquiries from potential employers immediately after placing the ad.
This case emerged the same week that Spain’s latest unemployment figures were published, showing that the number of jobless rose by 22,000 last month. Although August is traditionally a poor period for the labour market due to the end of many temporary summer jobs, these figures were particularly poor – they also showed that the social security system lost 134,000 affiliates – and a throwback to Spain’s recent deep economic crisis.
While the conservative government highlighted that unemployment had dropped by 360,000 over the last 12 months, many observers have cast in doubt prime minister Mariano Rajoy’s assertion that the macroeconomic recovery is reaching ordinary Spaniards.
Pablo Echenique, leader of the anti-austerity party Podemos in the Aragón region, tweeted a picture of the pensioner’s ad, with the comment: “In the newspaper classified section, the ‘recovery’ of @marianorajoy.”
“I don’t rule out the possibility that Spain could be growing at a rate of 4.0 percent by the end of this year,” said Manuel Lagares, an economist at the University of Alcalá de Henares. “But unemployment is still the big problem.”
Although the jobless rate has been steadily dropping in recent months as the Spanish economy has bounced back from its deep recession, there are still over four million people out of work, more than 22 percent of the workforce. The political opposition and unions also warn that new jobs being created are mainly temporary or of low quality.
Meanwhile, the number of people who are deemed “long-term unemployed” has steadily risen to 65 percent of all those without a job. This has put pressure on retired Spaniards, who in many cases are having to give financial help to the younger generations.
“We’re supporting the four million unemployed,” said Antonio. “The labour market can’t continue like this. Before, pensioners might have helped their grandchildren out, but now, unfortunately, we’re having to maintain them and our children as well.”
