«In Italy in 2024 we worked on average 246.5 days a year, however the data hides a strong territorial difference. In the North the average stood at 255 days a year, while in the South it stopped at 228: a difference of 27 working days, equal to almost a month of extra work every year for northern workers”. This was reported by the CGIA Research Office. «Obviously – it is added – the gap is significant also on the salary front. The average daily wage reached 108 euros in the North, compared to 80 euros in the South: the differential was 36 percent in favor of workers in the north. A distance that is also reflected in productivity: in the North it was in fact 36 percent higher than in the South. The picture thus highlights one of the main structural imbalances of the Italian economy, where differences in days worked, wages and productivity end up feeding each other.”
Why is the number of working days in the South lower than in the North? To answer, explains the CGIA, it is necessary to consider that «this is an annual number of hours compared to the number of employed people and that this lower figure is mainly linked to three factors: a greater spread of precariousness, a more frequent use of involuntary part-time work and a significant component of seasonal work (in tourism and entertainment). The conclusion that people work less in the South due to a lower propensity to work must therefore be avoided.”
This reading does not take into account another important element: the spread of illegal work, which reaches significant dimensions in the South. «Since this is illegal work, – continues the CGIA – these hours are not counted in the official hours. The result is that the official data underestimates the hours actually worked, since a part of the work done remains outside the statistics. It is therefore not so much a question of a smaller quantity of work, but of more fragile and less regular employment conditions.”
At provincial level, Lecco records the highest average number of paid days in Italy (265.4). Followed by Biella (263.9), Vicenza (263.4), Monza-Brianza (263.3) and Lodi (262.8). We are talking about territorial entities historically with a high manufacturing vocation, where in the vast majority of cases medium and large-sized companies work in a continuous cycle. At the bottom of the national ranking we see Rimini (212), Nuoro (205) and Vibo Valentia (195).