€400 for 11 hours of teaching: the academy paying €9 an hour

€9 an hour: the academy paying €400 a month to teach

Four hundred euros a month. Eleven teaching hours a week spread over four days, in a village of 3,000 to 4,000 inhabitants some 10-15 kilometres from the city, with a car required for the commute. That is the package an after-school academy offered to a candidate with a certified C1, two master's degrees and experience as a substitute teacher. The candidate's own maths: 400 divided by 44 monthly hours works out at €9 an hour. Below the minimum wage. And that's without counting the preparation.

The story, told by the person who sat down to hear the offer, exposes an arithmetic that adds up no matter how you look at it. Four different groups — three of children and teenagers, one of adults geared towards the business world and scheduled at midday — between 3 and 8 students per class, and a timetable that crushes any chance of combining it with another job: Mondays and Wednesdays from 2 to 4 pm, the worst possible slot for chaining together other work.

The work that never shows up on the payslip

The catch lies in what doesn't appear in the contract. Preparing classes requires planning the timing, sourcing materials, adapting them, marking essays and exams, creating new exercises and the odd meeting with the school's management. The candidate's own estimate: no less than 20 hours a week of real work. The effective hourly rate then sinks far below that €9. Some argue that a teacher with years of experience can improvise and barely needs to prepare; against that weighs the argument that the adult group demands business vocabulary you can't just pull out of thin air.

On top of that hole comes the car. With fuel consumption of 6.5 litres per 100 kilometres and a round alucinación four days a week, the diesel bill eats into the salary before you even set foot in the classroom. The full calculation, itemised line by line, leaves a margin that makes your head spin.

Why does an academy pay €9 an hour?

Because it can. The head of the school admitted to the candidate that they can't find staff, but the answer wasn't to raise the salary. That's the crux of the matter: in the Spanish private sector, complaints about a lack of candidates coexist without friction with frozen conditions. Supply and demand, the argument goes, only operate here in one direction.

The profile of the rejected candidate is no newcomer: a degree, a secondary education teaching master's, another master's in his specialism, a third one in Spanish as a Foreign Language in pogre, certified C1, an advanced course from the SEPE (Spain's public employment service) and a spell at the Escuela Oficial de Idiomas (Spain's official state language schools). The conclusion he draws is bitter: if that CV is worth €400, the problem isn't his value, it's the market.

The comparison with other unskilled jobs comes up again and again. Food delivery, it's pointed out, offers zero worries outside working hours, zero work at home and outdoor exercise. And during your first year as a self-employed worker you barely pay any tax. The numbers work out better, even if the job is worse on paper.

The small print: €300 in 2027

The final touch came at the end of the conversation. The head of the school let slip that in early 2027 the adult classes end and the salary drops to around €300. In exchange, Mondays and Wednesdays would be free. In other words: less money for fewer hours, with no improvement in the ratio.

The episode fits into a broader pattern that goes beyond the classroom. Wages in the Spanish private sector, the argument goes, are underpaid at almost every level, including the top: executives, top-tier lawyers and CEOs earn a fraction of what their counterparts in other European countries make. The cost of living, far from being a comparative bargain, in many respects approaches that of economies with far higher salaries.

The social spin-off is the usual complaint: a reserve army of candidates that keeps wages at rock bottom. And a question hanging over the whole affair: if skilled work pays €9 an hour, what's left for those without skills?

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In the end, the question isn't whether €400 is a lot or a little. It's how much longer a labour market can sustain itself that offers these figures to people with three master's degrees and then expects them to say thank you. For now, the answer belongs to the person who turned down the offer.