When the pandemic arrived, the Italian industrial system was already suffering from a series of structural problems, which today have repercussions on the various capacities to respond to the crisis. A study published in January by Istat divides Italian companies into five groups according to the strategies adopted to respond to the economic and health emergency:
- static and in crisis: those who just suffer without opposing any reaction strategy;
- static and resilient: companies that have not implemented reaction strategies because they have not suffered significant negative effects;
- proactive in suffering: companies that have been hit hard by the crisis but have tried to react;
- expanding proactive: the entrepreneurial realities slightly affected, which have not altered their previous development path;
- advanced proactive: companies affected in variable ways by the consequences of the crisis, but which increased their investments in 2020 compared to 2019.
Now, the point is that there is a correlation between these categories and the size of the companies. The “static in crisis” production units are in fact much smaller than the “advanced proactive” ones: respectively, on average, 6,5 employees against 47,2.
In this regard, the economist Simona Costagli notes in a recent Bnl Focus that "at the last date prior to the outbreak of the pandemic for which structural information was available (2018), the data show" that "micro-enterprises (less than 10 employees) represent in Italy 95% of the production units, employ 43,7% of the workers and realize 27,5% of the added value”.
This is a serious competitive disadvantage, because “company size results related to both productivity and propensity to invest – continues the analyst – The added value per employee of a micro-enterprise in Italy is equal to 30.000 euros against the 72.680 of a large one. In manufacturing, a company with over 250 employees invests around 14.500 euros a year per employee, against 3.600 euros for a micro company”.
Overall, Costagli writes again, "the structure unbalanced towards the very small size of the enterprise and the level of productivity and investments proportional to the size are both cause and effect of a low use of both qualified personnel and digital infrastructures. In Italy, among those employed over 15 years in the production system, only 5,1% have at least a tertiary education diploma or an academic diploma, while 4,7% do not have any qualification or at most of only the primary school diploma".
On the other hand, it is clear that the reaction of the Italian production system to Covid does not depend only on these characteristics. Indeed, the most decisive factor is the different impact that the closures imposed to curb the contagion have had on the various sectors. However, “from the analyzes carried out it is clear that the least productive units were penalized the most – concludes Costagli – with a higher-than-average labor cost, a lower-than-average education of employees and more oriented towards local or national markets”. In other words, smaller businesses.
Also for these reasons the Prime Minister, Mario Draghi, intends to reserve public aid to companies with a prospect of recovery, excluding those that already had problems staying on the market before the pandemic.
