Italy Is Held Back by 2.6M People Who Have Given Up on Work

One of Spains hidden problems in that stat is that they have regressive taxation, you pay a large monthly amount to be able to work. So many people literally cannot afford to pay taxes because the taxes are more than they earn. Its crazy and needs to change. Result is a lot of pissed of low earners who have no interest in the recorded economy and work entirely in the black market. Many would love to be able to invoice legitimately but can't (economically) so lose good work, and that leads to huge lost opportunity for the country as a whole. Its madness. The government literally try to tax more than people earn. Clearly they rarely get money that doesn't exist, except some people who take a hit one month in the hope things pick up next month. It's pretty much impossible to pay someone for a day's work. You have to either pay a full month (at which point the tax is reasonable), find black money to pay them, do no work, or do it yourself. Most people cant afford to pay someone a whole month's wage because that is what they are living off.

Some of that 20% is black market but most of it is lost opportunity.

This stats are bad and this article doesn’t account for a few points:

- in Italy the amount of jobs that are carried illegally, without a contract, is huge. Particularly when you’re young or in certain sectors, having a contract is a dream. The state counts these illegal workers as unemployed.

- in general, the work market is toxic. There is no minimum wage and salaries are so low and work conditions so shitty that, sometimes, people feel it might not be worth it

Really, the country has so many structural problems that these stats can’t be just read in such a superficial way.

As an Italian, I say that the top reason is not schooling or scarce attitude, it's humiliating salaries.

You work hours and hours and get peanuts for your efforts. While your employer buys the 5th Porsche.

I come from one of the richest regions, yet as an IT professional I felt appreciated only when I started working abroad. No matter how much I tried, most job offers in Italy are ridiculous.

There's gonna be a lot more of this, both voluntarily and involuntarily, as we continue to automate. This isn't bad, it's just different.

We'll get UBI and robots eventually and this will be the status quo everywhere.

This is an exasperating article. Where is the data on who these 2.6m people are, demographically speaking, what their reasons are for not seeking work, and how they supporting themselves if they don't work? 2.6m young people not working is very different from 2.6m people who've basically chosen early retirement, for example. It talks about a skills problem, but without giving real any numbers or context.

Different country, but I'm basically one of those people who fit in the category of unemployed and not looking / don't want to work.

Why would I?

Why would anyone want to sacrifice one third of their life, if not more, only to still be short on rent for a studio appartment? Especially in my country where rents are through the roof and leases are 1 year max. There is no stability. I cannot build anything here. Not even a home.

Plus the older I get, the less interested I am in material things. I have a Toyota Yaris. It gets me from A to B reliably. I don't need, or want a Ferrari. It's the same with everything else that I own. They all do their jobs perfectly fine. I have no need for more 'stuff' so I have no need for more money to buy better and more stuff. I can't take any of that with me to the grave anyway.

If I don't care about this 'stuff' then why would I care to work for someone whose only goal is to acquire more of this stuff for themselves? Or why would I want to work for a company that only produces more of this stuff to sell to poor souls who find meaning in this meaningless stuff? Especially when most of it just serves to destroy our environment further.

I really don't care about work any more and for the first time, I feel free.

It's not mentioned in the article, or I haven't seen it but Italy has introduced universal basic income for unemployed few years back.

This is seen as one of the major changes.

With the average net salary in Italy being around 1500€s per month, 800 is enough to get by, especially in the south where cost of living is much lower.

All low income or seasonal jobs now are just skipped by the recipients of the basic income, for two reasons:

1) there is no point anymore going to work for a salary that isn't significantly better.

2) in case they lose the job they will also not qualify for basic income for some time as well. So they don't take jobs to avoid losing the basic income.

I don't know what to think about it, I most definitely oppose basic income as it is. No point into having a basic income if you don't have a system that tries to lift people from it and put them in the job market.

I write this on a lot of threads, but it’s likely another intended consequence of the Covid madness.

Millions of people were pushed out of their jobs and either can’t get back in, or choose not to and decide to cut their cloth accordingly.

The shutdowns and restrictions also killed a lot of materialism and led people to live cheaper and simpler lives etc with lower spend.

Then we have the inflationary effects of the money printing reducing the value of the cash people do earn and pushing things like houses further away from reach.

All 3 of the above apply to me some degree and I am also ambivalent towards working as a result.

Maybe these are all good things for the individual, society and the environment, but none are great for the economy.

I'm Italian, living in France but still with friends and relatives in Italy: the substantial reason is simple: offered wages is too low to live. So many prefer black jobs and subsides because with a normal not-so-qualified job they simply can't survive.

The actual government, as many others in the recent years, follow interests from USA in their geopolitical stanzas instead of Italian one (one of the reasons some Citizens accuse it of high treason, while the majority simply do not care) and the country slowly sinks on its own weight because a society can't prosper if there is a so deep difference between rich and poor and no mode middle class in between. That's is. Of course that's denied by most because neoliberals have drawn such society so it must be good. Right wings say the fault is in young and slackers who profit from the (demolished) social system to live as parasites, left-wings (dummy left, clerical in reality) say the fault is covid, Ukraine, grasshoppers and a bad quantum conjunction between a butterfly in the South Pacific and a shrimp fart but none want to admit that a functional society must be social with a difference between rich and poor, but not too much, with a social system, without being an actual fascio-Chinese system etc.

Many instead of considering the power of numbers and so create a simple and not-necessary-violent nationwide mass strike imposing government and their private accomplices going to trials for MANY crimes coming back to a Republic decide that's nothing to do because all others do nothing in a loop and left the world advance seeing evolution from the window. Some like me choose years ago to emigrate even though I still have to find an active population to a point of thinking back at classic aristocracy and bourgeois models...

I wonder how "gamified" are those numbers in other countries, and the unemployment numbers in general. Certain countries in Europe, at some point classify you as "unemployable" and give you some benefits so that you don't even show up on those numbers. Would be more interesting to see % of the population working and compare between different countries. Using "unemployment" numbers can mean very different things in different countries.

I'm not saying that Italy and Spain don't have the worst numbers, they probably do, but I am very suspicious about how real the "good" numbers are.

They're not "not working and not searching", they're working under the table to not pay taxes and they're officially unemployed to get the minimum income guaranteed by the State.