The number of young people in employment is plummeting, 2.4 million fewer in 19 years

John

By John

The workforce in Italy is still aging due to demographic decline: those employed between 15 and 34 years old in July 2023 – we read in the latest Istat data – are just 5.3 million with a drop of almost 2.4 million (2,366,000 units) compared to July 2004, the year the series began historical. The number of over 50s is growing consistently, reaching 9.4 million in July 2023 compared to 4.8 million in July 2004 (+4,559,000 units).

Between the ages of 50 and 64, 8,667 thousand people work and 735 thousand workers are at least 65 years old. The employment rate for those aged 50 to 64 went from 42.3% to 63.3%. Overall employment has grown in these 19 years by 1.1 million units thanks also to the greater participation in the labor market of women and of the older group blocked in the office by the various pension reforms but the composition of the workforce has changed in significantly due to the tightening of access to pensions and the demographic decline which has reduced the younger cohorts. With effects on the difficulty of companies to renew personnel. If between 15 and 64 years of age in the last 19 years the employment rate has increased from 57.7% to 61.3%, between 15 and 24 years of age there has been a decline from 28% to 20.6% and between 25 and 34 year olds from 70.5% to 67.7%. For the group between 50 and 64 years there was an increase in the employment rate of 21 points, from 42.3% in July 2004 to 63.3% in July 2023 with an increase of 1.3 points only in the last year. The number of people employed in this group grew by 300 thousand units in the last year (from 8.36 to 8.66 million) out of 362 thousand more employed people overall. Even in the middle age group for work, between 35 and 49 years, there was a decline in employed people, which went from 9.8 million to almost 8.76 (almost 1.1 million less) but the employment rate in this range it increased slightly from 75.6% in July 2004 to 76.2% in July 2023.