The real income of Italians is among the lowest in Europe, only in Greece is it worse

The purchasing power of Italians is dangerously falling, due to inflation and stagnant wages.Eurostat data nails the government.

• Eurostat certifies that the real income of Italians is the lowest in Europe, apart from Greece.
• This is despite the improvement in employment data, advertised by the government, but still not sufficient.
• With wages at a standstill for 30 years, the debate on the minimum wage is still open but has not taken off.

If Italy is one Republic founded on work, then we live on very unstable foundations.And not because at the moment we have a problem with unemployment, on the contrary, but because in a decidedly counterintuitive way, together with the growth in employment purchasing power decreases of Italian families.In short:the problem is not so much the availability of work, but the quality of work and real income.

 

This is the conclusion that can be drawn by putting together some of the most recent national and community statistical reports, the latest being that of Eurostat, the statistical office of the European Union, which in the tables of his latest social scoreboard certifies that the real, gross disposable income of Italian families is decreased by more than six percentage points compared to 2008, the year that preceded the great economic crisis that broke out in the United States and soon spread to Europe.This is despite the decrease in unemployment and the slight increase in wages recorded in 2023, and mainly due to'high inflation, that is, the increase in the cost of living.Of the prices of the things we buy, from energy to food through clothes and entertainment.

Employment rises, but the problem is real income (which falls)

According to Eurostat, in Italy the employment rate between 20 and 64 years has increased from 64.8 percent in 2022 to 66.3 percent in 2023 (+1.5 points):data that essentially confirms those of a few days ago from Istat, and which had made the government in office led by the president express satisfaction Giorgia Meloni.Data that would not seem negative, if read alone, out of context, but still numbers well below the European average, which in the meantime has risen to 75.3 percent.The same goes for two other related data, positive overall but always low in the merciless comparison with Europe:

• The unemployment rate in Italy it fell from 8.1 percent to 7.7 percent (-0.4 points), while the EU average went from 6.2 to 6.1 percent.
• The number of young people neet (neither employed, nor in training and not looking for work) in Italy decreased from 19 to 16.1 percent, the lowest level since 2009.In Europe, the figure fell from 11.7 to 11.2 percent (-0.5 points).

The same can be said for the risk of poverty among Italian workers, which fell to 9.9 in 2023 from 11.5 percent in 2022: today we are at the lowest level since 2010, but we have yet to return to the levels before the 2009 crisis.And broadening the field to include non-workers, Istat in March, in preliminary estimates for 2024, certified that in 2023, families in absolute poverty were 8.5 percent of the total, compared to 8.3 percent in 2022, corresponding to approximately 5.7 million individuals (9.8 percent;share almost stable compared to 9.7 percent in 2022).In short, there is little to celebrate: if we are improving – and it is not said – it's really very little.

Not to mention the gross income available to Italian families which, as Eurostat now reports, is the real Achilles' heel:compared to 2008 it dropped to 93.74 points (keeping 2008 equal to 100 as the reference unit), while the EU average increased to 110.8.To put it in one sentence:Europe has returned to the levels before the great crisis, Italy has not yet. Only Greece, the country most affected by the 2009 crisis, did worse than Italy, with disposable income at 72.1 percent compared to 2008.Germany, by contrast, saw disposable income growth at 112.59 percent in 2023.

In short, what is evident is that the The Italian problem concerns wages more than employment:as previously warned internally by theInapp (National Institute for Public Policy Analysis) in December 2023 and then internationally lOECD (Organisation for Economic Growth and Development), Italian wages have remained substantially unchanged from the early 1990s to today.In particular, from 1991 to 2022, they have increased just 1 percent, compared to the average of 32.5 percent in the OECD area, while productivity (in practice, the effort of workers) increased.THE'Inapp (National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies) already warned eight months ago that there are "strong doubts about the sustainability of this model in the long term".

The still ongoing battle of the minimum wage

At the time, the parliamentary campaign for the introduction of a minimum hourly wage, set at 9 euros (variable based on inflation), below which no collective bargaining agreement can go:a campaign that in the meantime has spread outside the parliamentary halls, because it is possible to sign online for the presentation of a popular initiative law proposal.Because, given that the problem is also that of raising the levels of average salaries upwards, naturally the problem of the cost of living weighs particularly heavily on the less well-off.

In the European Union, 21 out of 27 countries have a minimum wage, which is updated based on the increase in inflation.In France, for example, the percentage increase in the minimum wage in 2015 resulted in an increase of 11 percent.Most recently, Germany increased the hourly minimum wage to 12 euros in 2022, a 25 percent increase from the previous year;While Spain increased the minimum monthly wage again in 2023 to 1,080 euros (on 14 monthly payments, 1,260 if paid in 12 months), bringing it to an increase of 47 percent compared to 2018 when Pedro Sánchez's government took office.The current majority, which often recalls how "all the data on employment and wages have improved since we have been in government" (true, but as we have seen to an insufficient extent, sometimes insignificantly, and not true as regards purchasing power), maintains that the minimum wage is not the solution and that, on the contrary, it risks flattening average wages downwards, and that we must instead rely on collective bargaining, which however already covers 87 percent of cases:the proof tried that collective bargaining alone has so far been a failure.