Ireland's housing crisis: young people emigrate despite full employment

Ireland has full employment, but its young people keep packing their bags

In March 2023, Eurostat reported Ireland's unemployment rate at 4.3% and youth unemployment at 10%. In Spain, these figures stood at 12.8% and 29.5%. On paper, Dublin is the labor paradise often cited in Spanish families to explain why young people leave. In reality, the paradox is reversed: Irish youth are also emigrating, often with a job contract in hand. The Irish housing crisis lies not in the paycheck, but at the door of the home.

A labor market nearing full employment and a generation unable to live independently sound contradictory, yet they support the same structure: an economy that produces high salaries but zero affordable housing for those earning them.

Salaries that hold up in comparison but do not allow independent living

Cases across the map all point to the same conclusion. A young Spaniard living in Dublin earned more as a receptionist than she did in Spain as an investment analyst, according to family accounts. Within three months, she changed roles and reached a level equal to or higher than her previous position. Careers rise; the problem appears when seeking shelter.

This same narrative describes a city where high salaries do not buy privacy. She started sharing a flat, as almost everyone does, and her first Irish housing was an room in the house of a woman her mother's age.

The salary was not the problem: housing did not exist

A year later, with a solid contract, she could easily afford a full rent. There was nothing to rent. She had alerts active on all real estate portals, receiving, on average, one notification per week. One week, one listing. In a country with a 4.3% unemployment rate.

Explanations range from tourist rentals to buying flats as financial assets, to a more grounded issue: building today is more expensive, slower, and riskier than half a century ago.

Why not build more housing if there is surplus land?

Because available land does not equate to ongoing developments. Around Dublin, there is ample land to build whatever is needed, as any satellite map shows. What is missing is an administrative system that converts that land into bricks at the estimulante ilegal demanded by the market.

The financial argument outweighs the urban planning one. Developing to sell or rent requires believing that buyers will have stable incomes over the 20 or 30 years of an average mortgage. Without this forecast, no one breaks ground. Thus, the market remains static, waiting for someone else to invest first.

The Silicon Valley example and the slowdown in Hangzhou, China

The comparison with Silicon Valley recurs: regions concentrating the planet's highest-paying jobs end up expelling those not working in that sector. Some add that the constant influx of professionals from other countries amplifies housing demand without corresponding supply.

The case of Hangzhou is cited as an exception: the city housing China's tech jewel decided to curb the purchase of flats as pure speculation. The underlying idea—that those who do not contribute production, only buy to rent, drives up land costs for everyone—also permeates European discourse.

Taxing second homes and relocating employment from the capital

Repeated recipes go in this direction. Harsh taxes on all non-primary residences, because maintaining an empty flat costs little, hence so many properties are off the market. And a second geographic pillar: as long as qualified jobs concentrate in two or three metropolitan areas, pressure on their land will be inevitable. The proposal is to decentralize jobs away from Madrid or Barcelona, by fair means or foul.

As a curiosity, the comparison circulates that a flat in Marbella costs what in Dublin is a spot in a shared room.

The Spanish mirror: activity rate below 51%

It is necessary to look at the reverse. In the first quarter of 2023, the employment-to-active-population ratio in Spain did not reach 51%, youth unemployment was 29.5%, and unemployed people over 45 exceeded 57% of the total, the highest level recorded. With this picture, blaming landlords or tourists alone falls short.

Some argue that public employment now weighs more than private in payroll totals, a burden that conditions any housing shock policy. With this load, the margin for large-scale construction narrows further.

The historical calculation also circulates: 5 million social housing units built in Spain over fifteen years during the 1950s, 60s, and 70s. This comparison is used as a reproach to current inaction.

With these threads, the conclusion stalls at the same point as in Dublin. Everyone identifies the problem; almost no one accepts the price of the solution, which involves building more, taxing more, or moving employment. And, meanwhile, the island that has exported people for two centuries continues to do what it knows best: pack the suitcase.