Work and wages, the bad figure of Italy: it is the black jersey among the OECD countries. Over the past 10 years, salaries down 8.3%

How is Italy placed on the job front? Bad. And compared to the other OECD countries it is the only one that, in the last 30 years (from 1990 to 2020) has recorded a drop in wages (-2.9%). An alarming figure, which is even more striking when compared to the + 38.5% which represents the average growth of the 36 OECD countries. This is what emerges from the “Inapp 2022 Report – Work and training, Italy facing the challenges of the future” presented today at the Chamber of Deputies. Considering the data relating to the last thirty years, the figure on productivity is also striking, which grew by 21.9%: therefore, the mechanisms for linking wage levels to labor performance do not seem to have worked. In the last decade (2010-2020), in particular, wages have decreased by 8.3%.
10.8% of the employed are below the at-risk-of-poverty threshold
It does not end here. The situation worsens even more if we look at the employment figure. Poor workers represent 10.8% of total employment, compared to an EU average of 8.8%. It is one of the aspects that emerge from the report itself. In the last decade (2010-2020), for example, the rate of “poor work”, explained by INAP, has been almost constant with an average value of 11.3% and a distance from the European Union higher on average 2.1%. 8.7% of workers (subordinate and self-employed) receive a gross annual salary of less than 10 thousand euros while only 26% declare annual incomes exceeding 30 thousand euros, very low values ​​when compared with those of other European workers. If we consider 40% of workers with the lowest income, 12% are unable to independently provide for a sudden expense, (therefore they have no savings or ability to obtain credit), 20% are able to cope with expenses up to 300 euros. and 28% expenses up to 800 euros. Nearly one in three has had to postpone medical care.
In Italy employment rate at pre-crisis levels in 18 months
Another aspect: in Italy it took longer than in other countries to straighten the employment rate that fell during the pandemic: it slipped down by about two percentage points, from 58.8 to 56.8% at the beginning of the crisis due at Covid, it only resumed growth in 2021 and took 18 months to return to pre-crisis levels. In OECD countries, the recovery was already substantial in the second quarter of 2020 and was completed in 15 months. In 2021 there were 11,284,591 new hires, with a prevalence of the male component: 54% against 46% for women.
Fixed-term boom
And now? After the Covid-19 emergency, the labor market still appears trapped in precariousness: of the new contracts activated in 2021 seven out of ten are fixed-term, involuntary part-time involves 11.3% of workers (against an OECD average of 3.2%), only 35-40% of atypical workers go into stable employment over three years, poor workers now represent 10.8% of the total.