Almost 13 million Italians and 2.2 million foreigners are at risk of poverty or social exclusion. In other words, they live in families with low work intensity, or at risk of poverty, or in conditions of severe material deprivation. This is one of the figures in the annual report on the economy of immigration (2022 edition) of the Leone Moressa Foundation, which will be presented today in Rome (at the Spazio Europa, in via IV Novembre 149, at 11 am).
Based on Eurostat data, the Foundation notes that among Italians, 22.6% of the population over 18 is at risk of poverty and social exclusion, while among foreigners the share at risk rises to 44.4%. Moreover, the gap between natives and foreigners is also accentuated at the European level: the risk of poverty for foreigners in the EU 27 is on average 40.4%, against 19.5% for natives.
The risk of poverty for foreigners is not due so much to the lack of work, but to the tasks performed, which often involve lower wages. In fact, immigrants in Italy had an employment rate of 61.1% in 2019 (population between 15 and 64 years). A higher rate, therefore, than that of the Italians, which was 58.8 percent.
With the pandemic, 176,000 jobs for foreign citizens were lost in 2020, recovered only partially in 2021 (the jobs restored among immigrants were 53,000).
Thus, there are 2.25 million foreign workers in Italy, with an employment rate of 57.8% in 2021, lower than the employment rate of Italians (which was 58.3% in 2021 and then increased to 60.2%, in September 2022, according to the latest Istat data).