Confcommercio’s analysis: “The differences between the regions of the North and the South are increasingly marked, where the employed are less than thirty years ago”

«2023? There will be no recession. It is a year of transition between the phase of exceptional post-pandemic recovery and an uncertain future, with economic growth still to be built. This is the forecast of the Confcommercio research office, which for the current year estimates an increase in GDP and consumption respectively of plus 1.2% and plus 1%, with a slight improvement in 2024 with GDP plus 1.3% and consumption at plus 1.1%. Inflation is estimated to grow by 5.9% in 2023, to then drop to 2.3% in 2024.

“There’s nothing going ‘wrong’. But the German slowdown will not help our economy. And then the conflict in Ukraine is not expected to end in the very short term – writes the research office of the trade association -. The delays in the investments of the Pnrr are real, the timing of the adoption of the main reforms is in doubt. Above all, inflation seems to be falling more gradually than expected. This is not a good thing, especially since rising interest rates are doing their job correctly, which is to calm consumption and investment demand. In a certain sense, they are inevitable, perhaps necessary difficulties, like a systemic estimate».
The gap between North and South is increasingly marked
At the regional level, the North-South gaps are widening. In 2023, the GDP of the South will grow almost three times less than in the North (+0.5% against +1.4%); Lombardy with a growth of 1.7% is the region with the best performance, in last place Calabria and Sardinia with zero growth. Similar dynamics also for consumption in 2023 with the South at +0.4% and the North at +1.2%.
It is the most worrying the demographic decline. In 2023, the Italian population decreased by almost 1 million people compared to 2019, of which more than half in the South alone. In the long term, between 1995 and 2023, only this area lost residents (over 900 thousand) and Molise, Calabria and Basilicata are the Regions with the greatest percentage drops (between 11 and 12%).

In the South there are less people employed than thirty years ago, but more businesses are born
Employment dynamics also show greater criticality in the South, the only area that records, between 1996 and 2023, a loss of workers and which in 2023 will not even be able to recover the levels of almost 30 years ago. «Compared with a national average of +6.5%, the South and Islands show a drop of 1.7% against +13.1% in the Centre, +11.6% in the North-East and +6 .9% of the Northwest. There black shirt of occupation goes to Calabria (-7.2%) and Campania (-5.2%), the best performance for Lazio (+19%) and Trentino Alto Adige (+18.7%). The effects of this drop in employment in the South are being felt: between 1995 and 2023 the contribution of this area to the national GDP decreased from 24.1% to 21.7%.
«The process of outsourcing of our economy: market service enterprises came close to 2.8 million in the first quarter of this year, ie 54.8% of the total, a figure which represents an historical record; moreover, between 2012 and 2023, they grew overall by 2.5% against a 2.6% drop in companies in all economic sectors». The South is the area that shows the greatest vitality for this segment of companies with a growth of 6.2%.