Irati Lizeaga, a colleague of Elhuyar and resident in Oarsoaldea, has carried out a study on the situation of the Basque Country and other languages in the working world of the region, answering the following questions: What factors influence the use of languages in the world of work? Is the situation of the Basque Country healthy in the working world of Oarsoaldea? Does the client/user language care? What opportunities does the young population of the area have to work in Basque in the region? Has the situation changed in recent years?

The author has structured the work in two axes: on the one hand, she has met with the different agents of the region to learn about the initiatives that have been organized over the years for the normalization of the Basque country and, on the other, she has collected the linguistic situation of the working centers of the workers and inhabitants of Oarsoaldea through a questionnaire. Through this, more than 8,000 data have been collected and classified by sex/gender, age, municipality and economic sector.

Among the initiatives aimed at the normalization of the Basque country, it should be noted that Elhuyar used the data collected in the OLA Plan, designed between 2003 and 2004, to contrast them with the current data obtained through the questionnaire. Thus, it has been able to analyze the evolution of Euskera in the last 20 years in the entities of Oarsoaldea.

What was the result? Well, in general, in these 20 years the presence of the Basque country in the organizations has increased, but mainly in two aspects: in the linguistic landscape and in external relations. Labeling is the aspect that has undoubtedly been most worked on, as it is in this field that the best results are seen: the markers in Basque or bilingual format have risen from 28% to 77%.

This result is probably closely related to the subsidies that the municipalities of the region have granted for many years to translate the labeling.

At the end of the research, the author has also concretized the keys for the future. What are they? Firstly, plans and initiatives are needed to strengthen the linguistic training of staff, especially in industry, commerce and hospitality. In view of the data, the work done to ensure the presence of the Basque country in the linguistic landscape stands out, since the municipalities of the region have been offering aid for this for a long time. However, further work is needed to increase the presence of Euskera in documentation and written relations, both externally and internally.

Considering the evolution of Euskera in the entities of Oarsoaldea over the last 20 years, it can be concluded that the management of Euskera has focused on relations with the client, since in internal relations many workers do not use Euskera in their work centers; their working language is Spanish.

Finally, Lizeaga has emphasized that it is necessary to break from the perspective of external relations because the workers need resources and spaces to speak Basque internally, so that the use of Euskera in the work centers is not limited to the time of rest spaces.