In June 2021, the Spanish Council of Ministers approved the Youth Guarantee Plus Plan 2021‑27 for decent work for young people (YG+P), which followed on from the Youth Employment Shock Plan 2019‑21. The main objective of the YG+P is to offer young people the comprehensive support they need to enter the labour market, thereby promoting their socio‑economic integration and their personal and social development. The plan has a set of measures organised along six main lines of action: Line 1: Career guidance; Line 2: Training; Line 3: Employment opportunities; Line 4: Equal opportunities in access to employment; Line 5: Entrepreneurship; and Line 6: Improvement of the institutional framework.
This report presents the results of the mid-term evaluation of the YG+P, which assessed the performance and implementation of the plan from its launch in June 2021 until January 2025. It also assessed, on a preliminary basis, the achievement of the plan’s expected outcomes. The OECD evaluation team chose a theory-based approach, in which the theory of change (ToC) of the YG+P was key. This ToC was used to determine the evaluation criteria and evaluation questions. The OECD team also used a mixed-methods approach. This involved collecting, analysing and triangulating various types of data from a range of sources to provide robust, reliable answers to the evaluation questions.
Based on this work, the mid-term evaluation concludes that the primary objective of the YG+P and its target population were well chosen, given the current needs and priorities in Spain regarding youth employment. The unemployment rate among young people under 30 years old is high (20.2% in 2024, compared with an OECD average of 10.7%), as is the proportion of young NEETs (16.1%, compared with an OECD average of 12.6%). The YG+P is therefore needed to improve job market insertion and socio‑economic integration among 16‑29 year‑olds. The design of the YG+P is also considered relevant, as the characteristics of Youth Guarantee participants largely reflect those of NEETs at the national level.
A preliminary analysis of the effectiveness of the YG+P reveals that vulnerable young people who use at least one Youth Guarantee service have a much greater chance of entering the workforce than those who do not. The probability increases by 27 percentage points, according to the regression analysis.
The impact of the different services varies. Access to employment services increases the probability of finding a job more than training does. For vulnerable youth who use the employment services, the average increase is 16 percentage points, compared with 5 percentage points for those who just use the training services. Career guidance services do not significantly increase the probability of entering the labour market on their own, but when combined with employment or training services, they enhance their impact.
The results of the regression analysis on the quality of the jobs that young people obtain after using the services are mixed. On the one hand, vulnerable young people who participate in the YG+P have a higher probability of finding a permanent contract than those who do not. On the other hand, participation in the programme does not lead to substantial improvements in the duration of employment, measured as the total number of contributory days or contributory days under a permanent contract. This suggests that the programme’s influence on these contractual conditions is limited.
These results are consistent with the largely negative views expressed by Youth Guarantee participants in response to survey questions about the jobs they obtained through the programme. Only 32% of those surveyed considered that they were paid enough and only 27% thought that their working hours were appropriate. Contract duration was the worst-rated aspect: only 20% of respondents reported being satisfied with this aspect of their job.
Although the mid-term-evaluation results show the effectiveness and relevance of the YG+P, they also point to potential areas for improvement in terms of its implementation. Therefore, to increase the plan’s effectiveness in the medium and long term, the OECD has made the following recommendations:
Increase the coverage of career guidance and training services. Career guidance services coverage is moderate: only half (49%) of the Youth Guarantee participants received at least one career guidance service during the evaluation period (52% in the group of vulnerable young people). Moreover, coverage varies significantly between autonomous communities, ranging from 80% in the Balearic Islands to 25% in Melilla. The results are even less satisfactory for training services: only 16% of young people (18% of vulnerable young people) received at least one education or training service. Again, there are large regional variations: the coverage rate in Ceuta is almost double the national average (31%), while in Andalusia it is barely 8%. To achieve this objective, the following actions are recommended:
Carry out an in-depth diagnosis to identify the specific barriers that limit career guidance and training coverage in each autonomous community (e.g. insufficient resources; barriers to access for young people), especially those with coverage below 50%.
Expand career guidance and training services, especially for vulnerable youth, to improve coverage and address unmet service needs.
Monitor on an annual basis the coverage of career guidance and training in each autonomous community through the Youth Guarantee Administrative Registry to encourage ongoing improvement and thereby reduce territorial inequalities.
Better target incentives to encourage hiring of, and entrepreneurship among, vulnerable young people. Employment services have the highest coverage of all Youth Guarantee services: 68% of participants received at least one job-search or entrepreneurship service during the evaluation period. Several mechanisms facilitate this broad coverage. First, three‑quarters of the entities implementing the YG+P (regional PES and IBs) put in place agreements with companies to offer young people their first professional experiences. Second, almost all the regional PES disburse annual incentives and grants aimed at promoting the hiring of young people and youth entrepreneurship. However, despite this broad coverage and the positive effects that these services seem to have on labour-market insertion among vulnerable young people, the support could be better targeted: only half (nine) of the regional PES consider that incentives and grants to encourage hiring are focused to a large extent on vulnerable young people. This figure drops to six when it comes to incentives and grants for entrepreneurship. The following actions are therefore recommended:
Encourage the remaining quarter of the regional PES and IBs to establish agreements with companies to facilitate first professional experiences for young people.
Expand access for vulnerable young people to current incentives supporting hiring and entrepreneurship.
Strengthen internal co‑ordination mechanisms and improve communication and collaboration with external actors. The internal co‑ordination systems of the YG+P could be improved significantly. Although 80% of the IBs confirm that they have teams dedicated exclusively to working with Youth Guarantee participants, less than half the regional PES report having such teams. In addition, barely half of the entities surveyed have established formal co‑ordination mechanisms between professionals from the different Youth Guarantee lines of action (e.g. counsellors and trainers). Almost 80% of the entities have co‑ordination mechanisms in place with external actors (mainly with SEPE and training centres), but several obstacles hinder communication and collaboration. Almost a third of the entities report a lack of knowledge about other actors’ actions, a lack of regular communication and overlapping of initiatives between institutions. The following actions are therefore recommended:
Establish teams dedicated exclusively to the Youth Guarantee in all regional PES.
Develop internal co‑ordination protocols among Youth Guarantee professionals, putting in place formal collaboration structures, clear communication channels and co‑ordination officers.
Establish common inter-institutional communication protocols to increase access to information about other actor’s activities in the Youth Guarantee sphere, avoid duplication and promote synergies that improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the actions.
Invest in digital tools. Youth Guarantee participants make limited use of the programme’s digital tools. Among the participants who say they know about the Youth Guarantee, the majority (55%) report hearing about it through job centres. Only 12% say they got information from the programme’s official website or social media. Moreover, less than half of the participants surveyed (44%) registered with the programme through the Youth Guarantee website. Finally, just over half of the respondents mentioned using the job vacancy search engine, and only 11% mentioned using the Youth Guarantee newsletter. To achieve this objective, the following actions are recommended:
Improve and modernise existing digital tools, such as the official Youth Guarantee website or the job vacancy search engine, to facilitate access for participants (particularly those who have recently registered) to all the information available on employment services, training courses and other support provided by the Youth Guarantee.
Invest in additional applications and user interfaces to better connect participants to YG+P training and employment opportunities. This may include, for example, tools enabling users to map their own skills or chatbots that can provide information and advice. Introducing this kind of tool could generate a double benefit: lightening the workload of PES staff on the one hand and improving access to, and participation in, the programme on the other.
Ensure that no one is left behind in this shift towards digital tools by paying special attention to participants who lack digital skills or the technology to access these tools, and to other vulnerable groups that may need other access channels. More resources should be dedicated to offering face‑to-face services where this is necessary to bridge any gaps.
Implement gender-equality training mechanisms. Career guidance and training services are provided in a timely manner and are of high quality, but gender-equality training for staff could be improved. In almost all the regional PES and IBs implementing the YG+P, the majority of career guidance and training staff are specifically qualified to provide those services. The quality of these services is reflected in feedback from Youth Guarantee participants: 75% have a positive view of the career guidance counsellors’ skills and feel that the service is adapted to their personal characteristics and needs; this share increases to 85% in the case of training services. However, few of the staff have any training in gender equality: only six regional PES report that the majority of their career guidance staff have training in this area and only three regional PES report that their training staff do. To achieve this objective, the following actions are recommended:
Invest in training programmes (online and face‑to-face) that cover gender equality, to improve the skills of career guidance and training staff.
Incorporate mandatory modules on gender equality into the ongoing-education plans of career guidance and training staff.
Design systems to evaluate the capacities of career guidance and training staff in this field, establishing common indicators and minimum standards across all the autonomous communities to ensure that the services provided are of similarly high quality.
Identify, systematise and exchange best practices. The qualitative results of the mid-term evaluation show that the regional PES and IBs are developing good practices as they implement the YG+P. These include providing ongoing training to career guidance and training staff, implementing specific support mechanisms for vulnerable young people and establishing partnerships with the business community. To achieve this objective, the following actions are recommended:
Compile the successful methodologies and tools used by the regional PES and IBs to implement the YG+P, detailing the context in which they are applied, success factors and results obtained.
Develop a dynamic and accessible repository of best practices. This should be digital and interactive so it can be continuously updated and consulted, to foster inter-territorial collaboration and mutual learning.
Promote spaces for exchange (e.g. forums, seminars and workshops) where professionals from the regional PES and IBs can share experiences and lessons learned, for example on how they have adapted the programme to their particular context.
Strengthen YG+P dissemination and awareness campaigns. Almost all the regional PES and IBs implementing the Youth Guarantee carry out actions to disseminate and raise awareness of the programme. The main channels they use are their institutional websites (92% of the entities), social media (83%) and face‑to-face events (62%). However, despite these efforts, more than a quarter of Youth Guarantee participants is unaware they have participated in the programme. To achieve this objective, the following actions are recommended:
Design specific communication strategies based on evidence about how young people access and consume information.
Measure the impact of communication campaigns, using indicators such as reach, programme‑awareness rate and sign-up conversion rate, in order to adapt and improve communication actions on an ongoing basis.
Facilitate regular access to simplified key metrics from the Youth Guarantee Administrative Registry. The Youth Guarantee Administrative Registry is an extremely valuable database. It contains detailed information on participants’ sociodemographic profiles and the services they receive throughout their time in the programme. This mid-term evaluation has carried out coverage analyses and a preliminary analysis of the effectiveness of the YG+P. These would have been impossible without the information provided by the registry and the Youth Guarantee technical support team. However, there are still obstacles to accessing key, simplified results and disaggregated data. These obstacles hinder autonomous communities’ attempts to use these data effectively to monitor programme coverage, service targeting and other factors that influence the success of programme implementation in their territories. The following actions are therefore recommended:
Facilitate access to key metrics and disaggregated data from the Youth Guarantee Administrative Registry, to optimise their use in programme monitoring and evaluation. Improve the accessibility and simplification of these data. This will allow the autonomous communities to regularly monitor the coverage and targeting of their services and other relevant aspects and thereby understand how to strengthen programme implementation and effectiveness.
Expand the use of Youth Guarantee administrative data to better understand the effectiveness of the YG+P. The answers to the evaluation questions regarding the effectiveness of the YG+P are mainly based on an econometric analysis of panel data organised by “service pathway”. These data were extracted from the Youth Guarantee Administrative Registry. The analysis is designed to allow researchers to study correlations between the services received by participants and subsequent employment outcomes. However, the design also significantly limits the possibilities for temporal analysis. As the pathways do not adhere to a fixed time frame but depend on events specific to each participant, researchers cannot make direct comparisons between participants at standard intervals, such as 6 or 12 months after using a given service. This lack of synchronisation between the pathways of individuals makes it difficult to apply analytical approaches based on uniform time periods. It also complicates attempts to compare outcomes using the time elapsed since an intervention as a variable. The following actions are therefore recommended:
Explore options for developing a fully longitudinal administrative database. This design would make it possible to follow the entire trajectory of Youth Guarantee participants, including service usage and periods of employment, over time. This tool would help future evaluations analyse the programme’s effectiveness.
Further explore the differing effectiveness on the programme through a final outcome evaluation. The preliminary analysis undertaken by the mid-term evaluation indicates that the Youth Guarantee generates significant positive employment outcomes exclusively for vulnerable young people. This finding suggest that the interventions adequately address the specific needs of those young people who face the greatest difficulties in accessing the labour market. Nonetheless, the absence of a statistically significant effect on non-vulnerable youth raises critical questions about resource allocation and overall programme efficiency. The existing service provision may be insufficiently tailored to the specific needs of this group, suggesting that investments in their participation may not be yielding commensurate benefits.
Conduct a final outcome evaluation upon completion of the YG+P implementation. This evaluation should primarily focus on assessing the programme’s effects and impacts on participants’ key outcomes of interest. Furthermore, the evaluation should specifically examine whether these effects vary according to participant characteristics, such as gender and vulnerability status.