There is an international ranking that is rarely talked about and in which Italy really makes a bad impression: that of wages. Looking overseas, the comparison is humbling: a US worker earn on average 40% more than an Italian. It is true that the US suffers from a serious problem of wealth concentration, for which the average values are more misleading than usual, but this is not enough to redeem us. Our country, in fact, also comes out battered by the comparison with the main European economies. According to the 2021 report of the Think tank "Welfare, Italy", the same average Italian as before earns 27% less than a German, 17% less than an Englishman, 13% less than a Frenchman and even 31% less than a Dutchman.
The gaps are so wide for a historical reason. From the 1990 to the 2019 Italian wages – already low thirty years ago – have grown by an average of 0,13% a year, practically nothing. In the same period, however, Americans saw their wages increase by 1,22% per annum and rates above 1% were also recorded in Germany (+1,02%), Great Britain (+1,37% ) and France (+1,05%). Not as good, but still better than Italy, also Holland (+0,42%) and Spain (+0,27%).
“In addition to the absence of a national minimum wage required by law, the comparison highlights the low level of Italian salaries in many strategic professional categories”, reads the report. A high school teacher, for example, in our country he earns an average of 32 euros gross a year, i.e. half of what he would earn in Germany (800 euros). The average income of a doctor, however, in Italy it is 71 thousand and 500 euros, while in France it reaches 116 thousand euros.
For all these reasons, the problem of in-work poverty, the condition of those who – despite working at least six months a year – find themselves living below the poverty line. “The category of working poor it affects on average 10% of European workers and almost 12% of Italians”, explains the report, underlining that our figure is “the second highest after that of Romania”. Unfortunately, therefore, in Italy “the condition of poverty does not concern only the unemployed and the recipients of income or citizen's pension".
