Forum user: 'I know no one working in the private sector'

Laughable: I know no one working in the private sector

The diagnosis circulates with a mix of irony and alarm: in the immediate environment of those sharing it, private employment has become a statistical rarity. Of fifteen acquaintances, fourteen are civil servants or receive income from public funds. In another group of fourteen, eight are already civil servants, whereas only four were so eight to ten years ago. The anecdote repeats with an insistence that begins to look like a pattern.

The phenomenon is not limited to one neighborhood or generation. In a building with sixteen homes, eight house at least one civil servant, three are occupied by retired officials, four by families entirely composed of public employees, and only one by self-employed individuals. In a family network of fewer than seventy people, barely thirteen work in the private sector. The rest: civil servants, retirees, unemployed, students, and few children.

The civil service exam bubble: from age 16 to the academy

Parallels with the 2006 housing bubble appear in several posts. Back then, studies were abandoned to earn €3,000 as a construction worker; now they are dropped to start preparing for exams at sixteen. Language and engineering academies in neighborhoods have transformed into training centers for administrative assistant, tax technician, postal worker, or national police exams. Family investment in exam preparation is planned over three years or more, with the risk that not everyone passes and the money goes to waste.

Access, moreover, is not neutral. Prior temporary employment in the administration grants seniority points and courses added to the exam score. Those arriving from outside with a master's degree and no administrative experience find it very difficult to secure a Group A1 position. Competition is fierce and the funnel narrow.

The bald engineer and the public paycheck

The only cited case of qualified private employment is that of an engineer in an automotive subsidiary: €1,300 salary, high responsibility, huge workload, and baldness within a year due to stress. Compared to this, the modest public job with its connected printer, beers after work, and afternoon swimming pool. The comparison is not just economic: it concerns life expectations.

Some argue the public sector has become both a refuge and a punishment. A former public employee describes it as sarracena torment: witnessing daily harm to citizens and being complicit through silence. He moved to the private sector and does not plan to return, although he retains his leave of absence. Others defend the opposite view: private companies sustain the system and suffer from wage dumping and global competition.

Who pays for the party?

The question runs through the exchange without a definitive answer. Self-employed workers appear as superheroes financing salaries, pensions, medicines, and transplants. The ECB's printing press and debt purchased by Germany are cited as the mechanism keeping things running. And aging looms: in deep Spain, 90% are pensioners, 10% are workers, and there are few children. The baby boom generation retires and the ECB stops buying unpayable debt.

Purchasing power has halved in three years, according to circulating calculations, affecting rowers, civil servants, and pensioners alike. Stopping buying beef, switching from olive oil to sunflower oil, giving up watermelon in summer. It was said nothing would happen. No one says that anymore.

There is no conclusion. Some see the collapse of the civil service within less than three years; others recall countries with more public employees and note tourism sustains the structure. Meanwhile, the procession continues, the candle is short, and no one knows when it will go out.