There is a lot of technology and IT, but also more “traditional” jobs such as housemaid and hairdresser, in the top 20 of the profiles that companies find it most difficult to fill in Italy. A ranking extracted from data from Indeed, the job advertisement portal, which analyzed how many – of those published in 2023 (up to the end of November) – turned out to be “hard to fill”, that is, they remained uncovered for more than 60 days. This happened for more than three out of four requests “Security Engineer”similar situation for i “Cybersecurity Engineer”.
Ict also represented by “Digital Sales Account”in fourth position, and from “Firmware Engineer”, ranked seventh. Profiles that, he points out Roberto Colarossisenior sales director for Indeed Italia, also “have great negotiating power when it comes to salaries and benefits”. Among them, however, there are also roles typical of personal care and assistance. In fifth place live-in housekeepersimmediately behind them hair stylist. Then there is the difficulty in finding doctors: anesthetist (8°), radiologist (9°) e neurologist (10th) “have a significant percentage of job offers still open after 60 days”.
The quality of employment by Tito Boeri and Roberto Perotti 25 January 2024
Oiling the transmission between job supply and demand is, on the other hand, one of the challenges that Italy must overcome. Just a week ago, the OECD reminded us that we are among the countries with the highest percentage of NEETs, children who neither study nor work. That we have a better share of graduates between 25-34 year olds than Mexico alone, that for each student we invest 30% in education compared to the average of advanced countries. Furthermore, our spending is inefficient and in fact Paris invites us to develop “high-quality post-secondary technical education, including dual training models, combined with strengthening student orientation and greater alignment of school programs tertiary education to the needs of the labor market”.
But that is not all. Our researchers are paid less than in France, Germany and the United Kingdom and this “discourages” them. And it is difficult to redistribute work towards sectors and companies with a higher productivity rate, also due to the presence of non-competition clauses in contracts which – based on significant investigations but still on small samples – concern a “surprisingly high percentage of workers”.
On the other hand, the labor market is coming from a phase that is difficult to interpret. In the summer quarter, Istat certified a growth of 481 thousand employed in 2022, and again in the latest note on the performance of the Italian economy – relating to the last part of 2023 – the Institute reported a “solid labor market” with employed people reached a new record of 23.74 million. In the past year, stable employment growth has been surprising, as noted by Boeri and Perotti in this newspaper. In the last juncture of Research ref we reflect on what happened, underlining that the stability of employment – despite the economic slowdown – can be linked to the recovery of the job offer, the lack of which had characterized the period immediately after the pandemic. We thus moved forward, in a certain sense, by inertia to fill the demand that had remained unanswered. Added to this would be the phenomenon of labor hoarding, i.e. companies inclined to maintain staff levels as much as possible in the face of the difficulty of finding manpower, even in the presence of a worsening economic situation. The problem is that it is a fragile balance and the fear is that in the coming months the employment trend will become “less favorable”.