Malaga has been seeing a major improvement in youth unemployment rate and education. Before 2015, the number of young people between the ages of 15 and 24 not working or studying was genuinely concerning. However, the percentage of ninis, which stands for not working and not studying, had now almost halved itself. Within the time span of 2015–2023, ninis percentage has gone from 21% to 11.1%.
Ninis narrative on youth unemployment
What this percentage mainly shows is that young people were not ninis because of lack of ambition but rather by a lack of opportunities. Overall, youth unemployment in Malaga province went down from 20.447 to 9.512 in the past ten years. This data also resonate with the employment rate surging up to 90%. Another great news for the province is that the percentage of early school dropouts has also dropped from 27.7% to 15.9%, again within ten years.
Since 2015, Spain has invested over 3.2 billion euros in the Youth Guarantee Plan. This plan includes job offers, apprenticeships and further education within four months of finishing current education. Additionally the country has implemented new vocational training programs to make it more suitable with market demands. Furthermore, there has been a significant increase in job opportunities that in return came with economic growth for Spain.
Although all these efforts are clearly working, youth unemployment in Andalucia as a whole is at 37%. This is an issue that the regional ministry is set on diminishing by investing over 250 million euros. According to the regional ministry, this investment will not only help in job orientations and training but also in stable hiring. Moreover, second chance schools are providing individual support for unemployed and unqualified young people. This support plan aims to help them not only find employment and also complete their education. It’s expected that this model will bring a 61% success rate and further expands in the next year.