A little over a year ago that Nerea Rojas works full time at a Madrid bookstore. At 25, this is his first job, for which he charges 1,500 euros per month. 600 kilometers, in Barcelona, Alberto Jurado, 22, signed his first employment contract as a part -time waiter in a Mexican fast food restaurant, also last year. He won around 800 euros, with which he juggled to continue studying the physics career. Both cases represent that of many young people who, when entering the labor market, find them to define their life strategy, not even in the short term. Despite the latest revaluation, entry salar last available INE data.
In addition, the distance has increased in recent decades: while in 2006 it was 250 euros, in 2023 it climbed up to 492 (almost double that 17 years before). And it is even higher for women between 25 and 34, who charge 751 euros less than the average salary (200 less than men). This despite the fact that in recent years there is a slight reduction of the gap, which reached its maximum in 2015 with almost 640 euros.
To this brake in the first remuneration is also added a slowness in the salary progression that other previous generations did not experience. With 2010 INE data, those born in the 1990s earned less than half than their parents’ generation (those born in 1965) in that same year: 1,112 euros monthly gross by 2,096. Two decades later, in 2022, on the edge of the sentence and with the next retirement, the boomers 500 euros continue to earn more than their children, although they, who are already 40 years old, have experienced at this time a 81% increase in their salaries. The reason is that when wages began on the labor market, they had long devalued as a result of the financial crisis of 2008.
“The current economic context is very different from that of our parents. While it is true that those of previous generations had more accessibility to the labor market than the current ones, and that thanks to this we could opt for rent or the purchase of a home, the truth is that now young people have other priorities ”, Says Jorge Calviño, vice president of the Spanish Association of Human Resources Directors (AEDRH) and Crubunds Bank. “In my circle, no one is seen in the company where he is forever, however happy he is. I think we don’t have a job satisfaction like our parents, ”Red acknowledges.
This new aspirational horizon also influences the curve that draws the professional evolution of many young people. “The current model is very different from that before. You are looking at what company you can enter, but everything is much more unstable, ”laments jury. “Practically, none of them imagines for five years in the same company. That makes the salary improvements only reach them with the talent and knowledge that they are acquiring, which allows them to jump from one company to another, and not so much with the pluses by seniority. Something that does not necessarily have to be bad, since they can hit a large jump from one category to another, something that was previously more difficult for everything to be more ankylos, ”adds Calviño.
However, this extra qualification can play against. “In many works we find a professional category in our contracts that differs from the activities we really do during the day. In this way, to the problem of unwanted partiality, as was my case, it adds to charge less than it would correspond to us ”, Objeta Jurado.
Huge inequality
Comparing the first salaries that have perceived different generations of workers is complex in the purely accounting field, to the extent that there is no official statistic that expressly addresses this category of salaries. However, the closest measurement is offered by the INE salary structure survey, which allows you to mix the age and seniority variables to define the profile of new workers. Thus, it is observed how between 2006 and 2022 the average annual gain of children under 25 years of age with less than a year in its employment has risen only 30 euros: from 13,123 to 13,154 euros.
“There is a huge salary difference between some generations of workers and others,” says Javier Blasco, director of The Adecco Group Institute. According to their vision, this inequality is derived, among other causes, that older workers have progressively incorporate the different year -on -year increases associated with their permanence in companies progressively. “This has an impact on the youngest collective, and makes them perceive salaries that, today, make unassumable that they can, for example,,” he adds.
Regarding this circumstance, a recent study of the Bank of Spain aimed the true dimension of the housing problem: if in 2023 a person should allocate the gross income corresponding to, three decades before the economic effort was less than half (2, 99). Another revealing fact offered by the bank supervisor report indicates that, while 81% of those born in generations between 1945 and 1965, the percentage drops to 67% for those born between 1975 and 1985.
Despite its cohabitation in the labor market, salary differences depending on the age of workers are notable. According to the latest INE data, the average salary received by workers from 16 to 24 years with full -time in 2023 was 1,770 euros gross per month, almost 1,000 less than those from 45 to 54 years – which are the group that is the group that perceives the highest remuneration with 2,727.87 euros on average – and those of 55 and more.
Disintegrating the compensation by ages and sectors, it is observed how the biggest difference occurs in the services, with 1,242 euros away between the salary of the youngest and that of the senior workers; followed by industry (1,159 euros); Already a lot of construction (645 euros).
Another of the statistical foci that allows you to approach the evolution of entry wages is the Active Population Survey (EPA), in which the salaries received in their main employment are analyzed by those workers who have been less than a year in their position of work, although in this category they would not have to be only those newly incorporated into the labor market. Assuming, however, its majority presence, the differences with respect to the average salary again are striking: in 2023 the disagree was 553 euros, although this has been reduced by 100 euros since 2013.
They are enough or not to form the desired life project, the first salaries have experienced a continuous and especially accused rise in recent years, partly motivated by the boom of the minimum interprofessional salary (SMI). The agreement reached by the Ministry of Labor and the unions to place it in 2025 (50 euros more than in 2024), is the continuation of a path of revaluation that has elevated it by 97% since 2008.
“The increases of the last five years have been especially relevant,” says Luis Zarapuz, coordinator of the Confederal Economic Cabinet of CC OO. “Although there is still a gap between the salaries of the youngest and those of the average, it is observed that they are gaining some weight in recent years,” he clarifies. Along with this sustained growth, the reduction of the temporality caused by the Labor Reform of 2021 has also contributed to reducing the tension at the beginning of the professional trajectories, according to Zarapuz. “The financial crisis of 2008 punished the economy and destroyed a lot of employment. Since then, especially as of 2013, an improvement was seen, and with the approval of the labor reform in 2021 it has broken with a behavior that has allowed the gap to reduce, ”he abounds.
For many experts, including Carlos Prieto, Professor of Sociology of Labor Relations at the Complutense University of Madrid, and author of the book The metamorphosis of work and salary relationshipthe evolution of salaries is only a variable within a greater change. “In Spain, only the evolution of wages and employment conditions can be understood by reflecting in the medium term. And, above all, for how labor relations between companies and workers have evolved. Because wages are not only a matter of economy, but also a matter of social relations, ”he says.
Based on this perspective, Prieto considers that from the nineties to 2020, “labor market segmentation has been intensified”, mainly punishing the most vulnerable groups “such as young people, women and immigrants”, and moving the best salaries “to the average and upper segment.”
What do they work on?
According to his vision, despite the fact that there is still a notable difference between the amounts of entry salaries and the most widespread, the fact that almost half of the new contracts that are now signed are now indefinite and not temporary contributes to fighting The precariousness that was associated with many of the new jobs. “However, although the differences are being filled, there is still a psychological sensation that recovery dilates far beyond what the figures say,” Rebate Blasco.
Beyond their age, and the time they have been in the post, another variable to take into account to radiograph the salary inequality of the youngest points to the branches of activity in which they perform. And its presence is majority among those with the lowest average remuneration: according to the EPA data of the fourth quarter of 2024, 260,600 workers between 16 and 24 years worked in the hospitality industry. A sector in which the average salary (adding those perceived full and partial) was 1,455.92 euros, the second lowest.
The salaries offered today by the labor ecosystem show disparate results depending on the sector to which you look, or depending on the city in which they are analyzed. Taking as reference the capital of the country, Madrid, and reviewing the reports on salary trends prepared by different analysis companies, it can be observed that professions such as lawyers have the lowest initial salary (25,000 euros gross per year), while Logistics directors (40,000), and specialist doctors (70,000) are located in the high band. On the other hand, jobs such as teacher (28,000), nurse (26,000) or commercial manager (27,000) present the least accused oscillations throughout working life.
“The only escape to be anchored in the first salary is the recalification. This has nothing to do with the sector in which you are, but apply on all. If a worker has no qualification or does not improve it progressively, he will continue eternally with a low salary, ”Blasco rivets.
