The coronavirus effect does not affect the world of work in a uniform way. According to an article published May 7 by the Bank of Italy, between February 23 and mid-April the employee jobs lost in Veneto were more than double those burned in Piedmont: 46.500 against 21.100. How do you explain such a glaring imbalance?
The fact that the two Regions have a different number of workers has nothing to do with it: even by relating the data to the number of employed, it emerges that in Veneto 28 contracts were not activated for every thousand employees, against 15 in Piedmont.
Will the reason then be in the different degree of penetration of the pandemic? This explanation doesn't hold up either: in Tuscany, where the virus hit less violently than in Piedmont, the number of missed places still came close to that of Veneto (43 thousand).
Bank of Italy analysts point out that, in all three regions, “the drop was caused by one marked reduction in hiring, especially those with fixed-term contracts".
Hence, a hypothesis: "The lower impact of the Covid-19 crisis on the labor market of Piedmont compared to Veneto and Tuscany reflects the different sectoral composition of employment - reads the article - The trade and tourism sector, which is particularly vulnerable to the health emergency, has a lower weight in Piedmont: before the epidemic, only 33% of activations were concentrated there”, against 45% in Tuscany and 41% in Veneto.
In support of this theory there is also the fact that in the province of Bolzano – where 57% of employees are employed in commerce or tourism – as many as 10 jobs were lost in March alone. A huge amount.
But the labor market in the tourism sector is also characterized by a high number of seasonal contracts (which on average are 3% of the total in Piedmont, 10% in Veneto, 9% in Tuscany and even 34% in the province of Bolzano). This means, most likely, with the change of season the impact of the pandemic will tend to shift from North to South.
“The incidence of temporary seasonal contracts – write the Bank of Italy experts – is also high in the southern regions, especially in the summer period (around 10% in Campania and Sicily, 22% in Sardinia). If we add to this the fact that in the South the weight of total temporary activations exceeds 70% in all regions, while in the North it stands at around 50%, it seems reasonable to us to believe that in the regions of the South there could be significant drops in employment, especially in the coming months".
