Career path for a 30-year-old Spaniard with mental health issues: manual trades
A 30-year-old in Spain with aphasia and a history of failed training seeks a way into work. Replies point to manual jobs: gardening, plumbing, livestock farming. Is that the only way out?
English · Original discussion in Spanish · Published
Career path for a 30-year-old Spaniard with mental health issues: manual trades
Now 30 years old, with a history of language disorders —aphasia that distorts simple instructions— and multiple training courses that led nowhere, the user who started the thread paints a profile that the Spanish labour market treats with indifference: the young person who fits into no employment programme. His self-description, without embellishment, lists therapeutic failures, counsellors who repeat scripts and classmates who laughed behind his back. He is not an isolated case: he is the flip side of the endless employability narrative.
Manual work as a refuge
The replies, blunt and holding nothing back, all point the same way: manual jobs that require no social interaction or precise verbal memory. Gardening, municipal cleaning, plumbing, extensive livestock farming, hospital orderly. The irony is that, while official discourse pushes continuous training and digitalisation, those who suffer the system's filters most find an opening in the work nobody wants. One comment notes that street sweeper or gardener positions usually require connections, but the advice is to persist anyway.
Civil service exams: a dead end?
Someone points out that sitting Spain's civil service exams (oposiciones) means relocating unless it's for local government, and the poster rules out moving because he refuses to live in rented housing. The suggestion of preparing for library exams comes up, but without much enthusiasm. The feeling of wasting time studying recurs: courses that guarantee no job and a counsellor whose attitude is "whatever you do, it's all the same".
The uncomfortable truth
The thread offers no macro figures, but it shows a reality that youth unemployment statistics soften: the labour participation rate of over-30s with mental health problems is a statistical black hole. The advice he received —"find manual work and stop overthinking"— is brutal, but perhaps the only kind that works. The question left hanging is why a system that prides itself on inclusion leaves these profiles with no more options than existed in the 1980s.
Related forum discussions
Now 30 years old, with a history of language disorders —aphasia that distorts simple instructions— and multiple training courses that led nowhere, the user who started the thread paints a profile that the Spanish labour market treats with indifference: the young person who fits into no employment programme. His self-description, without embellishment, lists therapeutic failures, counsellors who repeat scripts and classmates who laughed behind his back. He is not an isolated case: he is the flip side of the endless employability narrative.
Manual work as a refuge
The replies, blunt and holding nothing back, all point the same way: manual jobs that require no social interaction or precise verbal memory. Gardening, municipal cleaning, plumbing, extensive livestock farming, hospital orderly. The irony is that, while official discourse pushes continuous training and digitalisation, those who suffer the system's filters most find an opening in the work nobody wants. One comment notes that street sweeper or gardener positions usually require connections, but the advice is to persist anyway.
Civil service exams: a dead end?
Someone points out that sitting Spain's civil service exams (oposiciones) means relocating unless it's for local government, and the poster rules out moving because he refuses to live in rented housing. The suggestion of preparing for library exams comes up, but without much enthusiasm. The feeling of wasting time studying recurs: courses that guarantee no job and a counsellor whose attitude is "whatever you do, it's all the same".
The uncomfortable truth
The thread offers no macro figures, but it shows a reality that youth unemployment statistics soften: the labour participation rate of over-30s with mental health problems is a statistical black hole. The advice he received —"find manual work and stop overthinking"— is brutal, but perhaps the only kind that works. The question left hanging is why a system that prides itself on inclusion leaves these profiles with no more options than existed in the 1980s.
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Summary of a discussion on Burbuja.info - Foro de economía, actualidad y política., translated from Spanish and reviewed before publication. Read the full discussion (27 replies).
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