Southern Tenerife: Primary Education Dominates Job Seekers

Southern Tenerife's job market faces a significant challenge: the available jobs don't match the skills of the people looking for work. According to new figures from February, released by the Canarian Employment Observatory (Obecan), most job seekers in this tourist region only have a primary school education.

In the main tourist towns of Adeje, Arona, San Miguel de Abona, Santiago del Teide, and Guía de Isora, a large 74% of job applicants haven't finished basic schooling. This is much higher than the average for Tenerife as a whole, where 52.5% of unemployed people only have primary education – a difference of nearly 22 percentage points.

This situation highlights a clear education gap in an area that relies heavily on tourism and hospitality, an industry that increasingly needs skilled workers. In fact, very few job seekers in these tourist towns have vocational training, making up just 3.1%. Surprisingly, this is even less than the number of university graduates, who account for 3.4%. Those with secondary education make up 19.37% of applicants, while 0.87% are illiterate.

Overall, the Canarian Employment Observatory reports 16,638 people actively looking for work across the twelve towns in southern Tenerife. While this number is 9,211 lower than ten years ago, it still shows the need for people's skills to better match the available jobs. Across the entire island, there are 62,923 job seekers. Their education levels are more balanced than in the south, but primary education is still the most common (52.5%), followed by secondary (33.7%), university (6.9%), and vocational training (6.6%). A small 0.2% are illiterate.