Why more and more young professionals want to leave Argentina

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Young professionals are the children of the disappointment of an Argentina that goes from one crisis to another.

A country where a young person, lucky enough to be part of the minority that has not yet slipped into poverty and graduated, longs for a steady job with a salary that lasts at least 30 days.

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Given this panorama, the disappointment they express toward the political class is not surprising. A cocktail in which, given the lack of opportunities and hopelessness of many young people, the way out is Ezeiza international airport.

“I’m a doctor, I worked as a Covid-19 counselor for a year, and now I’m going to live in Spain,” says one girl after signing up.

“I am a naval architect, she is a lawyer”: a couple made the same decision due to “the lack of hope for the future of the country”, although they had jobs; “we were doing very well, but given the uncertainty and economic instability…”.

These are all statements collected in a report by the program Periodismo Para Todos (PPT – Channel 13) by Jorge Lanata.

Some time ago, Alberto Fernández said, “In 2001, 2002, we created ‘Los jóvenes K’ with Nicolás (Trotta), with him, we put up a huge poster in the Ezeiza airport that said, ‘Don’t leave, Kirchner is coming’.”

In July, Cabinet Chief Santiago Cafiero noted that “the destination of our youth cannot be Ezeiza.” Néstor Kirchner came, then Cristina Kirchner, then Mauricio Macri. Today, 20 years after the last great political, social, economic, and institutional crisis, Alberto Fernández is at the head of the executive branch.

Within two decades, the country has once again become a country from which more and more young people want to emigrate.

Six out of 10 children in Argentina are poor; five out of 10 do not finish secondary school, and those who have the opportunity to study are increasingly choosing to leave the country.

In fact, 6 out of 10 university students want to leave Argentina. The brain drain is even greater than in 2001 when only four out of 10 were thinking of emigrating.

Iván Estévez studied programming but could not find a job here. “I’m going to Denmark because I feel that I’m pretty stagnant, that there are no opportunities here, that I’ve been struggling for a long time, that I feel that if I take one step, I’ll be set back three. It’s impossible,” he complains.

His wife is seven courses away from her degree in environmental engineering and “can’t wait to leave either.”

What does it mean to feel like one step forward is three steps back: “You train, you study, you work every day, but you want to move forward, and it’s impossible to make ends meet comfortably,” adds Estévez, who feels “sadness and anger” at the pain of this decision.

“I love Argentina, I love its places and its people, but you can’t project it,” he says.

Unemployment among young people in the country is over 25%. In addition, a young professional in Argentina has the lowest salary in the entire region: in comparison – with the free dollar – he earns a third of what he would earn in Chile, half of what he would earn in Peru, and 35% less than in Mexico or Brazil.

According to the PPT report, these are not the most alarming figures: Others show that only four out of 10 young people have a formal job and that 96% of Generation Z earns less than 50,000 pesos per month.

“I’m going to Spain, a place where you work and see the fruits, pay the salary,” said another 20-year-old at Ministro Pistarini airport.

“I’m 30, I’m going to Madrid for a great adventure, to look for a job, to move and see what fate has in store for us,” added another.

Andrés and Carolina, grandsons of a successful family in the local restaurant business, decided to start in Spain. First, there was inflation, which prevented them from knowing the value of their supplies since “they put a different price every week.” Then came the pandemic, “they locked us all up, and the head helps a bit, you start thinking and say ‘it’s time’, today I wouldn’t go back to Argentina, in Spain, there are clear rules.”

Cecilia Giordano, CEO of the HR consulting firm Mercer, analyzed this tragic phenomenon: “Today we see young talent leaving the country. We find high potentials, resilient professionals with tremendous adaptability, and the barrier to leaving the country is shallow. These young people can work from home for the world, or they leave the country because they don’t have a permanent family, children, house, or car, unfortunately.”

The step before Ezeiza takes place in the consulate, where 50% of the applicants are just young people who want to emigrate. Due to the incessant increase in applications, countries like Denmark have closed their work visas.

Spain is the main destination for Argentines in search of a stable future. Beyond dreams and bets, the testimony of those who have managed to settle is valuable.

Maximiliano Cardozo works in systems engineering, arrived in Madrid before the pandemic, and posted on his social networks a step-by-step guide to leaving the country that quickly went viral.

The fatigue and exhaustion of life in Argentina and the feeling that “you do many things worth much more than what is valued in Argentina” led him to believe that leaving the country was the right decision.