Confcommercio alarm: 280,000 workers are missing in the tourism sector

ROME. The problem of the shortage of manpower – especially in services – is very serious, denounces Confcommercio which from the forum that opens today at Villa Miani raises the alarm. According to the analyzes of the association’s Study Centre, in fact, if this year a 15.3% growth in tourist presences was observed compared to 2019 (reaching 500 million, as all estimates already predict), we would need of 280 thousand workers more than last year only in accommodation and catering activities. About double if we consider related industries, well exceeding the 500,000 mark. The «complaints» of the entrepreneurs on the difficulties in finding workers – explained by Confcommercio -, in short, appear to be consistent with the Unioncamere-Anpal estimates which, out of a quota of 580,000 vacant positions, estimate that a good 40%, equal to 220-230,000 jobs, do not they will be able to cover.

At the basis of everything there is essentially a demographic problem: data in hand, making a comparison between 2022 and previous years, it can be noted that if the population group between 18 and 30 years old, i.e. the one historically most suitable to this type of tasks, in 2011 there were 8 million and 320 thousand people (4.214 million males and 4.106 million females) last year we dropped to 7 million 712 thousand, with a decrease of 608 thousand units. Of these, 260,000 concentrated between 2018 and 2022. Not even the presence of foreigners helped to reverse the trend because in turn they fell by 106,000 units, going from 964,000 in 2011 to 859,000 in 2022.
Possible explanations for the shortage of workers? First of all, the Confcommercio Study Center indicates one: it concerns the reduction in supply followed after the pandemic with the emigration of qualified figures, transfers to other sectors (starting from construction), insufficient skills (due to lack of training). So the finger is pointed at the basic income and the deficit on the front of active policies (the suggestion is that if a subject is not employable, the measure does not change his employability). As for the question of wages, evoked several times to explain this type of phenomenon, Confcommercio disputes the idea that entrepreneurs want to pay “little” and therefore cannot find workers: it is an explanation – they argue – which does not hold up logically. If anything, there could be the negative influence of dumping contracts here.

As for the rest of the report, the Confcommercio Study Center forecasts a GDP growth of 0.9% this year and 1.2% next year, against respectively the +1% and +1.5% forecast by the government, the consumption of residents will grow by ‘.5% this year and by 0.7 the next, investments will rise respectively by 3.5 and 3, 6%, with a clear difference between the public ones which, driven by the Pnrr, would grow this year by 26.6% and 16.8% in 2023, while the private ones would drop by 0.7 this year and then earn a measly +0, 5 next. “Public investments, even those of the Pnrr – comments Confcommercio – do not seem to be able to develop private ones” due, is deduced from reading the new economics and finance document (Def) from a sort of crowding out effect, from the interventions that reduce the use of the superbonus by 110% and from the increase in interest rates.