The number of freelancers in Italy is growing, but their income is collapsing. These are the main data that emerged from the survey released by the Confcommercio Research Office on the occasion of the conference "Professionals between emergency and relaunch".
In total in Our country has 1,4 million freelancers, 6,2% of total employees. From 2008 to 2018, their number grew by 24,2%, mainly driven by non-registered professionals (+71,6%), which have now reached 390 units and are almost entirely active in market services (98,2%).
From an economic point of view, the income of non-regular professionals has increased by over 10% in 10 years, reaching 6,5 billion euros, but it is if you look at the per capita figure that the blow comes. From 2008 to 2018, the average per capita income fell 22,6% at 16.600 euro.
“Professionals not registered in registers or orders include tourist guides, condominium administrators, trainers and emerging figures of the new professions, such as designers, ICT professionals, management consultants and trainers, wellness coaches, wedding planners”, explains Confcommercio.
More than half of these workers are employed in highly specialized scientific and technical activities. Returning to the increases, between 2008 and 2018 it was above all the complementary activities of personal services, education (+195%) social assistance (+123%) and free time (+93%).
“There is a need for policies tailored to professional self-employment – he says Anna Rita Fioroni, president of Confcommercio Professioni - and in this moment the survival of the activities must be supported with targeted and immediate interventions, but for the future we need authentic structural reforms that favor competitiveness to guarantee the choice of autonomy and independence of each professional ".
