Brake from investment and industry, Csc revises growth: +0.8% in 2024

First of all, the recovery of international trade, starting next year. And then the easing of monetary policy, the return of inflation and the implementation of the NRP. Even assuming for the latter a partial grounding (a total of 60 billion between 2024-2025 out of more than 100 planned), the plan will still make an important contribution to the economy.

The summary, for Italy, however, is the limiting of growth: +0.8 this year, +0.9% next year, in both cases reducing the previous estimates of Viale dell'Astronomia. A higher pace, however - the report points out - than the national average in the pre-pandemic decades. Limited growth that is particularly fuelled by services, a macro-area that should strengthen in the final part of the year due to moderate inflation and improved conditions for access to consumer credit. A mixed scenario instead for construction, with the residential section held back by the stop to the Superbonus, against an infrastructural section relaunched by the NRP: an algebraic sum that will in any case produce a minus sign in the end.

Another brake on growth comes from industry, which remains negative in terms of production in the third quarter as well, with a drop of half a point as of August. Looking at the demand components, the most obvious turn for the worse concerns investments, whose growth is almost zero (+0.5%), after the run of the previous three months. In addition to the stop in construction, there was also the negative contribution of plant and machinery, where the long wait for the finalisation of the Transition 5.0 measures also weighed, in addition to the rate level. However, the net effect, taking all variables into account, is negative: after the deviation of more than eight points in 2023, fixed investments are seen to grow by only half a point this year, before falling by 1.3% next year. In particular, the 15% drop in housing will bring values back to 2008 levels.

On the consumption side, the recovery in disposable income is underlined as a result of the expansion in employment, even if the effect on spending is struggling to materialise (+0.2% per quarter), as a result of households' decision to try to replenish their financial stocks after complex years, increasing their propensity to save by more than 10%, two abundant points above the pre-Covid average. In the face of moderate inflation, the lowest among European economies, well below the ECB's target, there is also, on the real rates side, an even more evident restrictive effect in our country.

In terms of employment, the forecast is for a continuation of the trend, with the number of people employed continuing to grow in parallel with what has been achieved in terms of GDP. While thanks to the combined effect of inflationary reentry and nominal growth, real wages are seen to advance by more than four points in 24-25, reversing course after the 6.7 per cent drop in the previous two-year period.

While exports remained stagnant in 2024, crippled in particular by the fall in European demand, Germany in the first place, the dynamics were nonetheless such that market shares in destination markets improved. However, it is the sharp fall in imports, for consumer goods but also for investment goods, that is generating benefits in terms of growth, with net exports (those that count in terms of GDP) making a decisive contribution, amounting to 1.2% this year, while only +0.1% is expected for 2025.

While the two-year period 24-25, although not brilliant, still seems to be on a moderate development path, it is the more structural issues that the report looks at with concern, summarising the elements that put prospective growth at risk.

Starting with the demographic decline, which among its many negative side effects also entails a shortage of workers: whereas before the pandemic 26% of the expected recruitment was difficult to find, by 2023 the share has almost doubled to 2.5 million in absolute terms.

Despite the favourable migration balance, in 2028 it is estimated that the working-age population will be 850,000 fewer than today. Projecting forward modest economic growth, Csc thus estimates that the mismatch, already significant today, could widen by 1.3 million.

Braking the mobility of employees, another sticky factor in the labour market, is then the chronic lack of housing, the cost of which is generally a key factor in relocation choices. Milan, Bologna, Florence and Rome are some of the areas where the gap between rent/purchase costs and productivity is highest, with the result - paradoxically, the researchers point out - of having the greatest shortages precisely in the areas where demand for employment is highest.

If the country's competitiveness is put at risk by energy costs, which are structurally higher than elsewhere, it is on the subject of cars that the report dwells most emphatically. The collapse of the sector, which has returned to the production levels of 2013, is so extensive as to jeopardise the growth of the entire country in both the short and medium to long term. A phenomenon, analysts explain, that is not only cyclical but also linked to the change in purchasing habits, with a share of sharing growing strongly compared to the past. Another issue is cost, with disruptive effects linked to the new electric car offer. Over a 10-year period, switching to a model similar to this motorisation translates into a cost increase of 5700 euro for a motorist, 15% more. A key sector, that of the four-wheeler industry, both in Europe and in Italy, where it is worth 15 billion in terms of added value and 170 thousand employees, to which must be added the allied industries. This is why seeing national car production falling systematically in double figures, as it has been for months, is not good news at all.