According to the most recent report from Spain's council for young people, the under-30s in the Balearics would on average have to allocate their entire salary to the cost of renting a property.
In 2013, 53% of a salary was needed to cover rents. The 2019 figure is in fact slightly over 100% - it is 105.7%. For mortgages, the figure is lower, 89.3%, but obtaining a mortgage is difficult. Twenty per cent of the value has to be contributed, and only a minority of young people have this capability. In the Balearics, there is the particular issue of so much employment being linked to tourism and therefore to salaries which are generally below the average. A further factor with tourism is that for most employees there are months of unemployment.
The Emancipation Observatory's report indicates that increasing numbers of people aged under 30 are not moving out of the family home. There was a 5.5% decrease in the "residential emancipation rate" in 2019. This rate was 17.3% in the final quarter of 2019, and the situation is set to get worse.
In August, 9,611 people aged under 25 were registered as unemployed. This was an increase of 177% compared with August 2019. Many others were on ERTE terms, meaning that their incomes had been reduced.
The council notes that the employment rate among young people in the Balearics was one of the highest in Spain and that in the first half of 2019 there was a considerable increase in the number of permanent employment contracts for young people. The pandemic has changed all this, and young people - as happened during the financial crisis - will be particularly affected.
A further factor to take into account is that there isn't an abundance of property to rent, meaning that the cost to rent is high. This said, the crisis has led to an increase in availability, as has been noted in reports from property websites.