There is an economic figure that is rarely talked about, but which weighs on Italy's prospects much more than is believed. Let's talk about working-age population, a terrain in which the mechanisms of the labor market intertwine with those of demography. As emerges from a recent article from the Observatory on Italian public accounts, between December 2020 and December 2021 the number of Italians aged between 15 and 64 it collapsed by as much as 543 units.
Employment goes up, the employed don't
This datum explains why, in the same period, the employment rate returned to pre-crisis levels (even surpassed among women and young people, categories passed respectively from 50,1 to 50,5% and from 41,7 to 42,5 %), but at the same time the number of employed people between the ages of 15 and 64 decreased by 307 units.
The negative balance between over-15s and over-65s
The reason must be sought precisely in the collapse of the working-age population, in turn due to the joint action of some dynamics. Firstly, the negative balance between Italians who turn 15 and those who turn 65, caused by the decline in births recorded in the last half century and from the contemporary ageing baby boomers, now almost all of retirement age.
The role of immigration
Between 2000 and 2010, this trend was more than compensated for by immigration, which however dropped significantly after the financial crisis and then fell further during the pandemic, to the point that – by now – incoming flows are no longer sufficient to rebalance the negative demographic trend of Italy.
Result: in our country the population of working age began to decline around 2012 and accelerated in the following years, to then reach the disastrous collapse of 2020-2021.
The marginal role of Covid
Contrary to what one might imagine - explains the CPI Observatory - this decline is only minimally connected to the mortality peak caused by Covid-19, since this mainly affected the population over the age of 65. In the five-year period 2015-2019, the annual average of deaths among Italians of working age stood at 69.400, a figure surpassed by just 4.100 units in 2020 (at 73.500, a value very close to what is also estimated for 2021) .
The inactive ones
Finally, to further complicate the picture we add the so-called inactive, i.e. people without a job and who are not looking for work: their number has not only not decreased, as had happened in previous years, but has increased slightly, by 10.000 units , resulting in a further decline in the workforce, which includes only the employed and unemployed.
On the same topic, read also the interview with Professor Livi Bacci.
