that’s why unemployment is falling – Corriere.it

Pay attention to it. The positive news is there before our eyes, undeniable. The unemployment rate is now the lowest since before the euro crisis engulfed Italy 14 years ago. The number of unemployed (here the latest Istat data) – people in the flesh, not percentages – is the lowest since the financial crisis overwhelmed Lehman Brothers almost 15 years ago. The employment rate this year reached the highest level since at least 1977, explains Valentina Iorio in the “Corriere”. The female employment rate is still too low, but the rate is also at an all-time high for Italy (and must continue to grow). The youth employment rate has also returned to its highest level since before the tsunami of the euro crisis hit our country. And the number of employees? Again I mean people in the flesh, not an abstruse percentage. Well, that’s the highest… since the government of Paolo Gentiloni (2018). How is that possible?

The positive numbers

Let’s summarize. Percentage share of unemployment out of the total number of adults who are able and willing to work, at a minimum for almost fifteen years; number of people looking for work and not finding it, even the lowest for a similar period; percentage share of employment on the total number of people aged and able to work, even on historical highs; and finally also the share of young people and working women begins to grow to levels never seen before or seen only so much, too long ago. It has been a while since the labor market was not so healthy in fact – despite the eternal controversies – this year there are over 300,000 fewer families who take the basic income (compared to 2019). Yet there is something that does not add up. There is a silent malaise behind this healing of the country’s social wounds. Let’s stop looking at the percentages of some set and subset of the population. Let’s look at the total number of women and men who actually work: that tells another story.

Women’s work

That remains right where it was, more or less, when Italy was recovering from the Great Recession and approaching the pandemic recession. We are essentially where we were not too long ago, all things considered. And logical. It is normal that the number of people with an income from work in Italy is similar to that of when, in the midst of a populist revolt society, we went to the 2018 policies: the size of the economy is the same as then; after the collapse of the pandemic, we just recovered the production level of that phase. But why then are the employment and unemployment rates breaking all these records? Partly here is some real good news. For example, we are approaching the number of ten million employed women, perhaps we will exceed this threshold in 2023. Something never seen before in the country. Engaged in a job that is not just domestic tasks, there are today in Italy well over a million more women than twenty years ago. Not enough, but to celebrate.

Who stops looking for a job

Yes, but the rest? Here the matter becomes more puzzling. He notices that in the last year of recovery (until October) the number of employed people grew by 205,000. Instead the number of unemployed fell by almost double, by about 350,000 heads. Basically just under 150,000 people must have stopped working or looking for a job and have left the ranks of the employed population or that he can and wants to work, but can’t find it. In other words, the percentages of the employed are going up and the percentages of the unemployed are going down largely because they are calculated as a part-share of a whole that is getting smaller and smaller. The total of what Istat calls the “labor force” — productive people who are already or potentially productive in the future — are declining. In Italy there are fewer and fewer people capable and willing to roll up their sleeves. In the last year the “labor force”, according to Istat, decreased by 144,000 heads (confirming the above). Since 2019 there are already 750,000 fewer, something never seen before. the basic income that keeps people on the couch? Or maybe it’s the small incomes left by fathers and grandparents? I’m afraid it’s mostly something else.

The 200,000 workers who disappear every year

Let’s imagine that the typical 62-year-old Italian who retires this year was born around 1961, when almost a million people were born. And that the typical twenty-year-old Italian who in the meantime is entering the production system for the first time was born around 2003, when just over half a million people were born: just over half. If we remove from the account all those who in any case cannot or do not want to find a job, already since 2023 the dynamics of the Italian demographics has removed about 200,000 people from the “labor force” every year: a number that coincides with the drop of six million this group by 2050 estimated by Istat. In essence, the demographic recession in Italy’s productive capacity is not something that belongs to the future. already here, with us. And it will accelerate in the coming years. Alas, the steady, rapid shrinkage of actual or potential workers — driven by declining birth rates — explains much of the apparent improvement in employment data.

The demographic decline (and also of immigrants)

It may be said that regular immigration will allow for a rebalancing, but even here the accounts have to be done. For 2023, the government of Giorgia Meloni has authorized just under 83 thousand entries (with many bureaucratic obstacles), but these are not even enough to compensate for the exit of the hundreds of thousands of Italians and foreigners who continue to emigrate every year. In 2021 the population dropped by another 200 thousand heads and – writes Istat in its recent census on that year – “the decline in the resident population largely attributable to the decrease in the foreign population”: 141 thousand less than in 2020. So while in Italy we only talk about landings, for the first time in half a century the number of immigrants has started to drop. I don’t want to make it too long, but there is a need for reflection in the country on what to do and what not to do. Among the things to avoid, I would certainly put the obsession of politicians to send people into retirement as soon as possible: we simply cannot afford it. On the other hand, the country’s real priorities include increasingly effective policies to bring women and young people into the world of work with increasingly higher qualifications; therefore, a serious assessment of economic immigration of the best possible quality; finally, thanks to immigration, the goal is to double the number of manageable beds in homes for the elderly, up to at least half a million or even more. But am I wrong, or between the government, the majority and the opposition we talk about everything, except this? NB: All the data comes from the Istat database, selecting the workforce between 15 and 64 years of age as standard age classes.