What will happen to the universal allowance?
The point on employment, universal allowance and more. The speech by Alessandra Servidori
On the employment data published by Istat there were repeated ovations for a notable growth which, moreover, is essentially due to a seasonality referred to last July which deserves attention. In fact, as the annual meeting of the Def and the budget law on the topic of work, employment and the market approaches, what raises doubts refers for example to the given nursery school, which obviously hosts children up to three years of age of working parents; for a long time we hoped to reach that percentage of 33% in Europe, which is now close to 30% but is linked above all to the demographic winter on which we need to work intensely to support the birth rate structurally with resources already used from the Pnrr, of which no we have data referring to the strengthening of childcare services that are already operational and which would obviously support family and female employment.
The 2024 Budget Law provides for exemption from social security contributions, up to a maximum of 3,000 euros per year, for working mothers who have at least three children and on an experimental basis, for 2024, the bonus is attributed even in the presence of two children, at least one of whom is under the age of 10. We know that the percentage of children in Italy is 1.4 so applying a rule for larger families remains quite pleonastic. Furthermore, the contribution exemption provided for by the articles can also be applied for 2024. 4, cc. 9-11 L. 92/2012, albeit with some significant changes compared to the past.
In fact (and let's remember: they are resources of the European Social Fund) starting from 1 January 2024, the benefit has been reduced from 100% to 50% of the contributions paid by employers, including INAIL contributions, without any annual maximum contribution reduction (previously set at 8000 euros). The use of the exemption is linked to a series of requirements of the worker to be hired, alternative to each other: at least 50 years of age and unemployed for over 12 months; without regular paid employment for at least 24 months of any age, wherever resident; without regularly paid employment for at least 6 months and of any age, residing in a disadvantaged area or with a profession or economic sector characterized by accentuated gender employment disparity.
We therefore ask ourselves: if the choices are annual and not structural, with the hope of renewing them, how can we strengthen Italian female employment?
At the end of July the Italian employment growth was determined by self-employed workers (75 thousand units in a month) and yet the majority of inactive people, 63 thousand are women and are concentrated mainly among young people under 35 years of age up to well over 54 thousand. Therefore the "older" workers are reasonably employed and the unemployed are the young ones. Precisely at an age to be able to build a life and family plan.
Recently, then, the data from the system of the Ministry of Labor's structure for taking care of and introducing the unemployed to work has highlighted the serious problem of the modest practices initiated. We must obviously clarify the issue of the universal allowance which is still in the shadows and rightly criticized by the European Commission for the exclusion of immigrant families who are permanently in Italy and who also have their children study in Italy (regarding the right of citizenship) and reorganise decontributions in a tax context involving income tax. It is true, as Giorgetti states, that the accounts are numbers, the employment misalignment with the GDP is evident, the State budget calls for responsibility for the balance of lower expenses and higher revenues and reordering of priorities among which, obviously, we must work to a growth in productivity that forces us to invest in skills and training also to have an enlightened strategy to combat low jobs and instead conquer a greater share of higher level jobs which also mean more adequate wages.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/assegno-universale-dati-istat-occupazione/ on Wed, 04 Sep 2024 07:06:25 +0000.