In Spain, workers who did not finish primary school earned an average of 17,333.57 euros gross per year in 2022, 35.7% less than the average salary, while university graduates and doctors had an annual payroll of 44,672.13 euros, according to the Salary Structure Survey of the National Institute of Statistics (INE). Jorge Javier is a retiree who dedicated a good part of his working life to insurance and who started working when he was only 14 years old.
In an interview conducted by the TikTok channel @queopinanporlacalle, he points out that he believes he was wrong and that he should have studied more. Now, he also says: “But I wouldn’t have gotten high either.”
He explains that he started working at the age of 14 “in another company,” at a time when “you could work at fourteen.” He remembers that his parents insisted that he “study”, but he ignored it and continued working, and now, over the years, he has seen it as a mistake. “I was wrong, I was wrong there,” he laments.
Nowadays, working at the age of fourteen would not be legal, because article 6 of the Workers’ Statute prohibits “the admission to work of those under sixteen years of age.”
Now, when he started things were quite different, as were the rules. He points out that his father worked a lot for his family. “We have never lacked food or anything,” he says, although at home there was not the joy that, in his opinion, there may be now.
“You never know”
“I studied what I worked on afterwards,” he responds when asked what he would have studied. He points out that he trained in languages, learning French and English, and, above all, in insurance.
Even so, he thinks that maybe he was wrong not to continue studying, because “with some university studies or something, he would have achieved more.” Despite this, he admits: “I was wrong, or not, you never know,” but he is clear that, having started working so early, at the age of 30 he managed to have a lot of knowledge.
Going to university is not always essential to earn more than the average, since the results report of the same INE salary survey indicates that, in 2022, the salary exceeded the average from higher-level vocational training. This coincides with what Alberto Hernández, retired as an engineer, says, who recognizes that an electrician or a plumber earns more than an engineer.
The INE data says that unemployment drops, in general, the higher the level of education rises. In the second quarter of 2026, the unemployment rate was 6.21% for those with higher education, while that of those with incomplete primary education was 21.34%, according to the INE Active Population Survey.
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This retiree points out that he learned about the study “through reading” and that a good part of what he knows was learned by reading, in addition to what he was taught at school until he was 14.