Brussels. Louvre and Quai d’Orsay better than Quirinale stables and National Gallery?
Pergamon better than the Egyptian museum in Turin? The answer can and must be sought in the rooms and attractions that each museum offers, but looking at the numbers, the system of culture in France and Germany works better than the Italian one. Because if in the EU the sector is slowly recovering after the forced closures of the pandemic, in Italy the number of employees of cultural centers, museums and galleries continues to decrease.
Until 2019 there were 834 thousand jobs in the culture sector, with Italy third country of the EU for the employment force of art and architecture in all their forms. Then the health crisis redesigned everything. But while in France and Germany, after the drop in 2020, hiring has restarted in 2021 even if it has not returned to pre-pandemic levels, in Italy the curve has remained descending. There are 791 thousand employees at the end of 2020, and 771 thousand at the end of 2021. A hemorrhage that not only does not help to keep up with the main competitors in terms of canvases, sculptures, palaces, and artistic-cultural heritage, but a a trend that also betrays the European average, which is recovering. Because if there were 7.3 million employees in the art and culture sector in the EU in 2019, in 2021 the figure returned to pre-pandemic levels and even more (approximately +6,000).
Basically, Eurostat notes, if on the one hand “the number of people working in the culture sector in the EU has recovered”, the same cannot be said for Italy, which is even mentioned directly for its different performances. . During the two consecutive years 2020 and 2021, “a progressive decrease in cultural employment” was recorded in seven of the twenty-seven Member States of the Union. The tricolor flag flies in this small group (also made up of Estonia, Ireland, Sweden, Finland, Malta and Romania).
There is also another fact that stands out, namely the participation of women in this particular sector of the world of work. The man / woman relationship continues to reward the first term of this comparison. Before the pandemic 473 thousand employed and 361 thousand employed. At the end of 2021, the shares fell to 432 thousand and 338 thousand respectively. Also in this case, the country system is taken as an example, but not exactly exemplary. At the EU level, “the lowest shares of women are in Italy (44%) and Malta (30%)”.