How is the job market in Italy really going?
Positive data on employment despite the alarmism on the growth of precarious work and voluntary resignations. But the future remains uncertain. Claudio Negro's analysis for the Kuliscioff Foundation
The simultaneous availability of data on the first half of 2022 of ISTAT (employment stock, i.e. the number of employees in the average of the reference week in the month) and INPS (employment flows, i.e. dynamics of hires and terminations over a defined period of time) allows observations interesting. Among these, in the first place, the definitive settlement on ante covid, or even higher, data for employment.
The number of employees is 23,150,000 (+ 3% compared to a year ago) of which 21.5% (+ 0.7%) are self-employed, 13.6% are temporary employees (+ 8.3% ) and 65% (+ 2.7%) with permanent contracts. The employment rate rises to 60.2%, increasing in all age groups, especially those between 15 and 34 years (+ 3.4%). Among the employees, 82.7% are on permanent contracts, 17.3% have fixed-term contracts of various types; before the covid crisis, temporary workers were 16.8% of the total: there is an increase, but it is minimal; moreover, to give the idea of the size of the growth of forward contracts, in 2016, the recovery after the international crisis, was 15%. This is a real growth but far from calling into question the stable employment relationship as a generally applied model.
As to the reason for the growth of fixed-term contracts, there are also rational explanations with respect to the vulgate of most of the union and the political left for which it is a choice of capital aimed at maximizing profits by minimizing the costs for protection for workers, which we will examine later. If we examine the flows (hirings – terminations) we see that in trend terms (i.e. compared to the figure of 12 months earlier) the growth figure for hires with stable contracts is 144% and that of forward contracts 107%.
Another figure to consider is that of working hours: existing part-times (stock data) decreased by 1.1% compared to 12 months ago. At the same time, and consistently, the cumulative hours worked increased by 11%, and those per capita by 5.4%, demonstrating a trend that actually increases the permanent and full time contract.
Let's now talk about fixed-term contracts: if we examine the flow of hires we see that the by far largest group of fixed-term contracts has been activated in the tourism-accommodation-catering sector (163,000 units), equal to 91.8% of hires in the sector. The newspapers also emphasized the fact that in the "arts and entertainment" sector 63% of contracts last only one day: but these are minimal numbers (about 13,000 contracts, which are usually renewed several times to the same people) and it has always been a characteristic of that sector, for easily imaginable reasons.
In no other sector do we find results even remotely comparable: in fact, in the metalworking sector, permanent hires are double that of fixed-term hires, and in another sector in which hires have grown a lot, that of construction, the fixed-term hires do not exceed the 29% of the total. It is evident that the tourism and entertainment sector figures are heavily conditioned by the characteristics of seasonality and discontinuity, which on the other hand are structural, and cannot be reversed on the whole employment system. In part, similar considerations apply even if we refer to the flows in relation to the size of the companies: in companies under 15 employees, temporary start-ups accounted for 77% of the total, in those over 100 employees 44%. This is also a substantially unchanged historical figure: in 2018 they were 74% for companies under 15 and 42% in those over 100. In essence, fixed-term work is very widespread, beyond the physiological data, in very small companies and in the sector attributable to tourism.
These are entrepreneurial realities that operate in particular conditions, business discontinuity and uncertainty and marginality in value chains. And it is in this band that undeclared work, partial or total, underpaid jobs, pirate contracts are rooted. An issue that must be addressed in serious terms and not propaganda, knowing that we need much more than repressive laws (they already exist and illegal work has always eluded them) and incentives for regular and permanent work (there are already some but incentives obviously do not equalize the convenience of undeclared work) if, due to their productive characteristics, companies do not need this type of employment relationship.
Another commonplace, recent but very widespread is that of the Great Resignation: the Great Dismissal. Fascinating to write newspaper articles and actually useful to stimulate an appropriate debate on the quality of work and on the role of the same in a society that is about to strongly change the modalities and the role of human work. But out of place if passed off as an epochal novelty, or as the result of a cultural rebirth induced by the Covid tragedy.
As usual, just look behind the surface of the numbers instead of being impressed by them. Let's see them: first of all let's take into consideration only the resignations from permanent contracts (those from fixed-term contracts have completely different characteristics). First of all, we can note that the number of resignations in the 1st semester is impressive: 418.141. But if we deepen we see that in the same period of 2018 there were even 437,477! It is therefore natural that in 2022 there was an increase in resignations compared to 2021 (+ 145%) when the terminations of employment relationships were limited due to the Covid crisis both by regulatory measures (prohibition of dismissal) and by psychological conditioning linked to uncertainty is from the substantial freezing of the labor market.
For the same reason, dismissals by companies increased in the same period: + 191%! In other words: the disappearance of the restrictions linked to Covid has led to an increase in resignations but to an even greater increase in "traditional" layoffs. Furthermore, the percentage of resignations with respect to the total terminations was 45.6% in the first half of 2022, but it was 52.4% in 2017 and 56.1% in 2018: it is difficult to imagine, with these numbers, that we are in the face of an epochal phenomenon of escape from work; we are within a normal and consolidated trend, which moreover recalls a fact that has been known for a long time: 30% of permanent contracts do not survive the first year of existence, and in 60% of cases it ends with the voluntary resignation of the worker.
Ultimately: the most recent employment data are good, consistent with the general economic indicators. It should be borne in mind that the future is largely uncertain, and that consequently this situation (which, moreover, still presents enormous problems in relation to the mismatch between supply and demand for work) has ample room for worsening. That said, it remains difficult to understand the attitude of media and political forces that aim to emphasize beyond measure, sometimes ignoring the truth of the numbers, only elements that have a negative connotation chosen in a superficial and / or instrumental way. A "wolf, wolf" as free as it is harmful for the public's knowledge of reality. (Edited by Claudio Negro)
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/come-va-davvero-il-mercato-del-lavoro-in-italia/ on Sun, 02 Oct 2022 05:11:43 +0000.