The demographic trend has led to a significant reduction in young people employed compared to older ones. To combat this situation, it is necessary for politicians and companies to work to improve the conciliation of life and work times and the use of new technologies to encourage the entry into the labor market of larger groups of young people, women and also of immigrants.
The CNEL underlines this in the Report “Demographics and workforce” just published which highlights how in the last 20 years the number of employed people under 35 years of age, in fact the age group that represents the engine of the economy, has reduced by over two million units while that of workers between 50 and 64 years old. The aging of the baby boomers and the immediately following age cohorts has an impact, but also the decline in the birth rate and the tightening of access to pensions.
People aged between 15 and 34 at work went from 7.6 million in the third quarter of 2004 to 5.4 million in the third quarter of 2024 with a drop of around 2.2 million units while in the same period those employed between 50 and 64 years old went from 4.5 million to over 8.9. If we also look at those who work after the age of 64, it emerges that employed people between the ages of 50 and 89 have gone from 4.87 million in the third quarter of 2004 to 9.78 in the same quarter of 2024 in 20 years with almost five million more units. However, there was a significant drop, along with that of the under 35s, also for those employed between 35 and 49 years old, which went from 9.8 million to 8.8. «In relative terms – explains the Report – the incidence of under 35s on the total employed has fallen over the last twenty years from values above 33% (therefore more than 1 in 3) to 23% (less than 1 in 4). On the contrary, the incidence of employed people aged 50 and over has increased (both due to demographic dynamics and the increase in employment rates, also favored by the shift in retirement age forward) going from just over 20% to over 40%. The middle range between 35 and 49 years has entered into decline more recently, falling from 47% to 37%. After the pandemic, explains the Report, the employment rate between 25 and 34 years old grew from 63% in the year before the Covid-19 pandemic to 68% in 2023, approaching that of the early 2000s.
«A signal – it is explained – that the shortage of labor is encouraging companies and organizations to try to be more attractive to the new generations». However, the gap compared to the EU-27 average on the employment rate remains very large: almost 15 percentage points for the 15-24 age group and over 10 percentage points for the 25-34 age group. To counteract this reduction in employment among the younger age group, it will be necessary to implement policies to increase female and youth employment also through work-life balance measures. «In addition to more incisive public policies (on the school-work transition, on the conciliation between life and work, on integration) – we read – we also need a greater ability of Italian companies and organizations to go beyond the idea of a typical workforce of the 20th century with the figure of the adult male at the center to valorise all components of the population of active age, with attention to their specificities (new generations, women, immigrants) and favoring conditions for a long active life (through measures of Age management)”. Precisely for this reason, the CNEL also offers a positive reading which, so to speak, represents the other side of the coin: «paradoxically – it explains – precisely because of the fact of having underutilized these components, Italy currently has greater margin of positive push on employment and economic growth. A better valorisation to be combined also with the opportunities, not to be taken for granted, offered by new technologies”.