The UK, the promised land?

“England is not what was in its time”, it can be read in one of the website Spaniards forum’s comments. “When I was in Bournemouth more than 10 years ago, you could find four gigs in just a week... and without knowing much English”. Now, if you want to work as a kitchen porter you have to fill in hundreds of application forms and, of course, your English must be, at least, good.

Job-hunting in the UK has been complicated not only for those who are behind an unskilled job. The opinion of many foreign professionals living in the country since the days of the British economic boom is reflected in another comment on the forum: “since the very beginning I decided to look for a good job, something related with my studies. If was complicated; after all I was a foreigner with no experience or qualifications from England opting to skilled jobs, and the issue of the language was definitely a barrier... it wasn’t easy. However, once you have achieved that first job, you could promote without problems. I feeling I had was: if I don’t get an increase in my salary or a promotion I will quit. This situation, nowadays, has changed”.

Many Spaniards who have emigrated to the UK, partly because of the Spanish economic crisis, partly because they want to learn English, have found a very different picture of that immigration which the British island received during the 90’s until 2007: those immigrants enjoyed a period of full employment, with an unemployment rate of just about 5%.

However, between July 2007 and December 2010, about 900,000 jobs were destroyed in the UK, which meant an increase of the unemployment rate to almost 8% at the end of last year. The English have left being full employment period and they are competing now for those jobs traditionally held by foreigners who were eager for promising work experiences in the English-speaking world. In general terms, to find work in England today is basic to speak fluent English –hardly difficult to achieve for Spaniards because of an inefficient language education – which must be better according to the qualifications required for the post.

It is hard to compete with native speakers, obviously, but so it is with those immigrants who work for less than minimal wage without complaints. Another comment on the forum points out that Spaniards in general no longer put effort to search for ‘any kind’ of job. According to the author of that comment, the problem is not the impossibility of finding a job, but the rejection of certain posts by the Spaniards with studies. That’s why it is easy to find people who say: “Clean bathrooms, are you kidding me? I have a career!”

Whether the increase in the UK’s unemployment rate, the major competition in the job market or the rejection to work in certain jobs; job-hunting for foreigners can be extended to months. However, despite a scenario not so encouraging, many Spaniards decided to immigrate to the UK last year: a total of 3,949 people, according to the Register of Foreign Spaniards (PERE), which are included within the 64,317 Spanish residents. Of course, the real figure is much higher, as this number represents only those registered with the PERE.

It is clear that there is economic crisis worldwide, touching even powerful economies like the UK, however in Spain the figures are more than alarming: unemployment rate in April break its record at 21.9%, making up the highest percentage of unemployment in Europe. Since this trend has not stopped increasing, and we do not see any factors that predict the decline of the unemployment rate in the short term, Spaniard increasingly choose to emigrate to other countries with a greater chance of employability.

The *data speak again: Spain records the lowest number of job vacancies for every thousand people in all the major European countries, in fact, in 2008 the figure dropped significantly to 33 compared with the 352 in the UK.

Behind these figures is the reality of thousands of Spaniards who see in the UK the island of the opportunities, despite the economic crisis is also making an effect in the UK. "Job-hunting is difficult here”, says another Spaniard from London, "but there is no comparison with Spain, I stay in the UK".

*Source: Eurostat