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By Álvaro J. Díaz-Mella
A few days ago, a good friend told me about his son Carlos’s situation with a sadness he could not hide. The young man turned 22 on July 5th, having graduated with a degree in Digital Business Administration from a university in Galicia.
In January, he joined a company to complete his mandatory curricular internship: six months, five hours a day, without receiving a single euro. After graduating, the same company hired him for another six months—working five and a half hours a day—for a gross monthly salary of 350 euros. Part or all of that amount, he was told, comes from a public grant provided by the Xunta de Galicia aimed at youth employment.
This is not a casual collaboration: it involves five and a half hours of work a day for six months, for 350 euros. What kind of future are we offering a graduate with a profile that public authorities and companies tout as strategic for digitalization?
When a company strings together internships and subsidized schemes without converting the role into a standard job, the entry point turns into a revolving door. Public authorities fail to create a career path; instead, they prop up a position that vanishes once the funding ends, facilitating a cycle where young people move from one temporary arrangement to another without ever fully entering the labor market.
In a recent article on birth rates, I wrote that our obligation is not to tell young people how many children they should have, but rather to ensure that those who wish to start a family can do so without unaffordable housing, insufficient wages, or the passage of time making the decision for them. Carlos’s case is a perfect example of this: someone whose pace of life is beginning to be dictated by his circumstances.
But it is not an isolated case.
Another graduate—whom I will call María—completed her degree in Economics, presented her final degree project, and subsequently pursued a master’s degree in internationalization, which included a stint at a business school in London. Her entry into the labor market spanned nearly two years: six months of curricular internships paying a gross monthly salary of 600 euros; an eight-month training fellowship paying a net 600 euros; and a three-month internship at an auditing firm, earning between 700 and 800 euros net per month.
She then signed a permanent contract in the logistics sector with a gross annual salary of 20,000 euros, paid out in 16 installments: less than 1,100 euros net per month. According to her account, the assigned duties required neither a university degree nor prior experience. Her degree, master’s, language skills, and international experience did not translate into a professional role or remuneration commensurate with the qualifications she had acquired.
Along the way, he observed that a training fellowship could lead directly into another fellowship period linked to a Galician university—again involving individuals who were not formally enrolled students or who came from vocational training programs. While this is not an exhaustive description of every program, it illustrates just how easily the transition into the workforce can turn into an endless corridor.
Two different stories lead to the same question: how long can a young person be expected to study, specialize, gain experience, and accept transitional wages before being treated as a professional?
Not all aid for youth employment is useless, nor is every training contract exploitative. There are twelve-month programs in Galicia for graduates that offer financial support far exceeding that 350-euro figure. A fellowship is not an employment contract. The problem arises when the subsidy ceases to be a gateway and instead becomes the very basis for the position's existence. Unpaid curricular internships are not designed to cover ordinary work over a period of months. Nor does making Social Security contributions turn a fellowship into a career.
The distinction between training and employment should be evident in practice: genuine learning, duties aligned with one’s qualification, increasing responsibilities, and a reasonable prospect of continued employment. The contract for obtaining professional experience is a different type of arrangement: an employment relationship aimed at gaining experience at the level of the studies completed. Not everything presented as training shares the same nature or offers the same rights.
Pressuring companies alone is not enough. The average wage in Galicia remains below the national average. An economy dominated by micro-enterprises cannot pay the same wages as a large, high-value-added corporation. While this limitation explains part of the problem, it should not serve to perpetuate low-paid, training-oriented roles. Galicia trains professionals whom it does not always manage to retain. Simply increasing the number of public funding calls does not close this gap; what is needed is an economy capable of competing for that talent because it genuinely needs it—not because a subsidy allows it to replace staff every six months.
Public grants should be reported alongside verifiable results: how many workers remain after twelve months, what their wages are, and whether the company has made the position permanent. Entities that cycle through beneficiaries without offering a reasonable path to long-term employment should face a period of exclusion from future funding calls or be required to partially repay the subsidy.
The future of Carlos, María, and thousands of young Galicians cannot depend on public aid sustaining a job that vanishes once the subsidy ends. We must stop turning the transition into the destination and instead build an economy capable of paying for the value these young people can already contribute.
Álvaro J. Díaz-Mella
Vigo, September 2026
Sources:
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Image: Meta.ai. Translation: Elentir.
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