In a year and a half, Covid has put a strain on the Italian world of work, even if it was the so-called people of VAT numbers that paid the consequences. This was denounced by the Studies Office of the Cgia, the Artisans and Small Enterprises Association according to which from February 2020, the month before Covid, to last August, the latest available survey, the total number of independent workers1 fell by 302 thousand units (-5 , 8 percent). In the same period, however, employees decreased by 89 thousand (-0.5 per cent). If, in absolute terms, the former fell below the 5 million threshold (precisely 4,936,000), the latter reached 17,847,000.
«The crisis in the world of self-employment – explains the CGIA – starts from very far away. In the last 17 years, the maximum peak of openings was reached in March 2004, when the total number of independents present in Italy reached 6,303,000 units ». Subsequently, there was a continuous “bleeding” that in December 2020 brought this category of employment below the threshold of 5 million. In January of this year, however, the lowest quota since this time series has been reached was reached: 4,925,000. Finally, from February, the climb that lasted until April resumed. Subsequently, the curve had a sinusoidal trend and stopped in August at an altitude of 4,936,000.
Faced with these problems, the CGIA has asked both Premier Draghi and the governors to open a permanent crisis table at national and local level. “Never as in this moment – he underlines – is it necessary to give an answer to a world, the autonomous one, which is experiencing a particularly delicate situation”