Italy has over 3 million irregular or undeclared workers and 3.8 million workers who receive an annual salary equal to or less than 6,000 euros. The latest data available tell us that 10.2% of workers are in relative poverty, a figure that rises to 17.3% for blue collar workers and 18.3% for the employed in the southern regions, reports the president of Confcooperative Maurizio Gardini in his report to the 41st congress of his organization pointing out, in particular, that if the GDP grows more than expected in parallel, however, inequalities also increase.
“We take care of the country” is the slogan chosen for the occasion, looking at work and social inclusion as the leitmotif of the action of cooperatives that do not relocate, create jobs and pay taxes in Italy. Italian cooperation is worth 8% of GDP and produces 25% of Made in Italy agri-food, they represent 30% of consumer and retail distribution, 19.6% of bank branches and provide welfare services to 7 million of Italians. Confcooperative alone accounts for half of the pie: it brings together 17,000 cooperatives with 3.2 million members, 540,000 employees and a total turnover of 82 billion euros.
One in three families suffer
On the poverty front, one family out of 3 is placed in an area of economic suffering, Gardini points out. From 2005 to 2021, families in absolute poverty more than doubled, going from 800,000 to 1.9 million (in all, this phenomenon affects 5.6 million people, 7.5% of families. Relative poverty, on the other hand, concerns a more equal to 2.9 million families, 9.4% of the total and 8.8 million people in all, which corresponds to 14.8% of residents.In the case of relative poverty, the share is higher among the most young people (17.4% in the 18-34 age group; up to 22% among people under 18).
Reasoning in terms of “social investments”, economic hardship, points out Confcooperative, refers to two other types of poverty: housing and education.
Housing poverty
About 3 million families live in overcrowding and indicate it as the main factor of tension and criticality for their personal condition. The phenomenon affects 1.8 million rented families, 35.6% of the total, and 1 million landlord families, approximately 15.2% of the total. It is worse for families made up of foreigners or single parents, in this case it affects 1 out of 2 families. On the economic front, 12.1% of rented families are in arrears with the payment of domestic utilities, 9.4% with the rent due to the owner, while almost half a million homeowner families are, on the other hand, late with their mortgage payments (2.7%).
Educational poverty
The set of factors of economic precariousness may be at the basis of a growing sense of distrust that affects another “social investment”, argues Confcooperative, namely education. As many as 500,000 young people, more than 11 out of 100, in the 18-24 age group, drop out of education and training without having obtained a qualification or study title. Educational poverty makes almost 37 out of 100 eighth graders inadequate (47 in the South, 51 in Sicily and Calabria). Even the data on NEETs, 3 million and 85 thousand, about 1 in 4 young people aged between 15 and 34, testifies to the persistence of a phenomenon that has gradually consolidated.
Health poverty
In 2022, 7 out of 100 Italians chose not to get treatment, even though they needed it, but the figure rises to 12% in the case of people with scarce economic resources. Even aging and non-self-sufficiency undergo a selection in the possibility of ensuring assistance services. We have 3 million people, 63.1% are over 64, who suffer from severe limitations in daily functions. There are 12,639 social welfare and social health residential structures with 307,000 beds for the elderly: 70.3% are in the northern regions.
Learn the comparison with other European countries. Compared to the 441 beds per 100,000 inhabitants destined for long-term hospitalization in Italy, Germany is able to offer 1,166, Sweden 1,293 and the Netherlands 1,373. In all cases it is an offer at least three times higher than the Italian one. In short, that of health, Gardini points out, is a broken right.
Finally the work. And the difficulty for businesses to find all the personnel they need. The mismatch, estimates the Confcooperative Study Center, is a problem that undermines the competitiveness of businesses, large, small and micro, it accounts for 1.2% of GDP, equal to 21 billion. Suffice it to say that 1 cooperative out of 2 complains about the lack of professional figures. “Our companies employ 540,000 people, they could hire another 30,000 – Gardini denounces – but they can’t find suitable figures, from the healthcare partner to the technical-scientific area, from agri-food to transport and tourist and cultural services”. Among the requests that Confcooperative addresses to the government is that of “investing in virtuous companies that generate decent work, further reducing the tax wedge which weighs about 10% more than the OECD average. It would free up new resources for businesses and leave more money in the workers’ pockets with a positive effect on domestic consumption depressed by inflation”.