The gender gap in the labor market is widening in 2021. After the decrease recorded in 2020, female employment records a negative figure in 2021 and therefore the distance from pre-Covid levels widens. In this scenario, male employment will increase again in 2021, thus widening the gender gap in terms of employment which, however, remains less wide in Milan than the national average and that of Lombardy. These are the main results of the analysis carried out by the Assolombarda Study Centre.
“After a 2020 in which it had held up more than at a national level - said Valeria Negri director of the Assolombarda Study Center -, the female labor market in Milan will not restart in 2021. On the contrary, male employment is rising. Thus the gender gap in our city is widening, with the employment differential between the two genders approaching 10 percentage points". In Milan, they have seen a reduction in jobs - 5 employed, on the other hand they have grown by +11 for men.
More generally, the pre-Covid employment levels were not recovered during the past year: the 6 more employed do not make up for the -48 registered during the emergency.
Work, gender gap: in Milan the decreasing trend is more sustained in the last 4 years
In Milan in 2021, as regards employment rates, the difference between men and women rises to 9,8 percentage points from 8,8 in 2020 (the year in which the emergency had reduced the distances compared to 10,2 percentage points in 2019 and 10,9 percentage points in 2018) thanks to the high concentration of jobs with a high professional content and in valuable sectors such as healthcare, female employment.
At the end of 2021 there are still -42 thousand total employed persons in the metropolitan city compared to 2019 (equal to -2,8%), a figure that emerges from the sum of -23 thousand women (down by -3,3%) and -19 thousand men (-2,3%).
However, in Milan the downward trend is more sustained, in the last 4 years, in fact, it has decreased by a good 2 percentage points (from 15,9 in 2018 to 13,9 in 2021). In any case, the gender gap in Milan remains much lower than that observed in Lombardy as a whole (13,9 percentage points) and in Italy (17,7).
On a national level, the Milanese market remains the most favorable for women
Despite this retreat on the gender gap, Milan remains the most advanced city in both Italy and Lombardy for job opportunities for women, with an employment rate of 63% (664 working women in 2021). A figure higher than the Lombard average (59,6%) and the Italian average which appears to bring up the rear of Europe, below the 50% threshold.
La female unemployment is at 6,6% compared to the male at 6,3%. While the gap in terms of inactivity rate is much wider: the share of women of working age who do not have a job and are not even looking for one, is 32,5% against 22,1% for men. But the data on female inactivity in Milan is lower if compared to both the Lombard figure of 36,3% and the Italian figure of 44,6%.
