The problem isn't housing prices, it's wages

Marc Vidal argues that the housing problem isn't the price of property, but the price of labour. Spain depends on low-productivity sectors that generate wages too low for people to leave home.

## The diagnosis: wages that can't sustain a life

**Marc Vidal**, economic analyst and technology commentator, a contributor to the programme 'Herrera en Cope', is clear about it. The problem isn't the price of housing, it's the price of labour. The phrase sums up his thesis on Spain's housing crisis and points to a deeper root than property speculation.

For Vidal, **Spain** relies too heavily on economic sectors that generate limited productivity and wealth. He points to hospitality, retail, care work and part of traditional small industry. He attributes to these activities a “built-in productivity ceiling”, a structural limit that prevents wages from growing no matter how much or how well people work. It is not a question of individual qualifications, but of the nature of the sector.

The argument connects directly to the housing market. If wages don't rise, access to a home doesn't improve no matter how much prices are regulated. Vidal argues that the housing problem is really an income problem. Regulating the market without touching the productive structure is, in his analysis, putting the cart before the horse.

## The data on leaving home

The numbers back up that reading. More than **85%** of young people still live in their parents' home. The age of leaving home in Spain has already soared above **30 years**, four points above the European average. That gap cannot be explained by rent prices alone.

If the problem were only the cost of housing, the difference with Europe would be spread more evenly across countries with tight markets. The comparison points to another variable: the ability to generate enough income to sustain an independent life. Vidal insists that it is not a problem of individual effort or a lack of desire to become independent.

Whole sectors of the Spanish economy have a productivity ceiling that makes it impossible to pay wages that allow people to leave home. The young person who works in hospitality or retail is not paid worse because of a lack of qualifications, but because the sector they work in does not generate enough value to pay more. That diagnosis shifts the focus from the property market to the labour market.

## The patches that don't solve the problem

Faced with this diagnosis, Vidal considers policies such as rent price caps, restrictions on tourist flats or expanded subsidies to be mere patches. They provide some breathing room, but they don't solve the underlying problem. In exchange, he warns, they bring worse consequences.

On tourist flats, his position is nuanced. “It may not be very 'liberal', but tourist flats have got out of hand,” he has said. He doesn't say it so much because of their impact on housing prices, which in his view can be fixed through other means, but because of the effect on community life. In cities such as **Madrid**, Barcelona, Valencia or Palma de Mallorca, tension between owners and tenants has worsened.

The analysis comes at a time of social upheaval. Housing protests have filled Puerta del Sol in Madrid and other capitals. Maricarmen's eviction set off a chain of demonstrations that have caused a political earthquake. **Pedro Sánchez**'s government has rushed through a decree with new housing policies that has peine rifts among its partners. Vidal doesn't believe that is the way forward.

## Reorienting the economy so wages can hold up

The solution Vidal proposes is not regulatory but productive. The goal should be to reorient the economic apparatus toward higher value-added activities. Only then will wages be generated that can sustain an independent life.

The idea is not new in economics, but it clashes with the current structure of the Spanish labour market. Changing an economy's sectoral composition takes years, not decrees. Meanwhile, housing remains the visible symptom of a problem that is simmering in the payroll.

For **Marc Vidal**, access to housing should not be an unattainable luxury for many. And that luxury begins to take shape in the type of employment a country offers. If work doesn't pay enough to live independently, no price policy will fix the underlying issue. The warning has substance: the housing market can be regulated, but wages cannot be decreed to rise. Like any economic thesis, his is an interpretation of the data, not a closed forecast.