In January 2025 the number of employed in Italy risen to 24 million and 222 thousand, equal to an employment rate on a monthly basis of 62.8%: it is the highest level since January 2004, when the historic series began. The unemployment rate is also at the minimum, 6.3% (-0.1% in January). On average of 2024 there is an increase in employees of 352 thousand units compared to 2023 (+1.5%) while the unemployed have been reduced (-283 thousand, -14.6%). Increases, however, are the inactive between 15 and 64 years (+56 thousand, +0.5%).
The data communicated by Istat on March 13 confirm the positive trend of employment in Italy, even records, which for months has presented one of the most brilliant dynamics in all of Europe. But at the same time we have been witnessing, for almost two years now, a constant contraction of industrial production, which has reached 23 consecutive months of tendential drop. How do you explain this paradox? Is it not contraintumental to see the growth of employment just when production stagnates?
The response to this apparent contradiction comes from the most in -depth analysis of data on employment and on the distribution of the workforce in our country. First of all at a geographical level: in 2024 the occupation grows in the South more than in the north and in the center: in the year there was an increase of 142 thousand employed (+2.2%) against the 117 thousand in the North (+1%) and 94 thousand in the center (+1.9%). The South also records the most marked reduction in the unemployment rate (-2.1 points compared to -0.9 in the center and -0.6 in the north). This trend reflects that of the sectors where the job demand has increased. These are macro -areas such as tourism, agri -food, but also boating and other sectors related to exports and widely spread throughout the country. But while the South was able to maximize the tow of these, in the north the numbers were negatively compensated by the crisis of the manufacture, which weighed on the final result.
In the light of a partial and synthetic analysis like this, you can still draw a couple of solid political conclusions. The first is that the tax and work policies implemented by the Government with its first two budget laws have made their fruits. The good performance of the South was accompanied by incentives such as decontribution and the various tax credits, as well as by the implementation of many PNRR projects. While a role must also be recognized, as some unions also say, to the attention located by the government on a sector such as agri -food.
The second is that – on the contrary – the problems that have curbed the occupation, especially in the North, are external, mostly linked to the cost of energy and industrial policies decided in Brussels. The Green Deal of the first von der Leyen commission had a huge weight on the whole manufacture, starting with the car and components, heavily affected – for the same reason – by the economic crisis in Germany.
The theme will now be to understand if another external element, such as the introduction of duties, can have new negative effects again.
In fact, at risk there is precisely the export sector that in recent years has pulled more than internal demand. But unfortunately it is so: although national economic policies can be virtuous, one cannot fail to deal – now more than ever – with the effects of the geopolitics that is played around us.