More employed in tourism, but one in two jobs is hard to find

Tourism represents a flywheel for the labour market in Italy, employment continues to grow, but companies have to reckon with a lack of personnel, which is likely to bring to an abrupt halt the race of the sector that has been driving the Italian economy for years. Companies are struggling to find cooks, pastry chefs, ice cream makers and waiters, and it is mainly companies in the Centre-North that are paying the price.

In 2024 this sector will have more than 1.5 million employees (+2.1% compared to 2023 and +21.5% compared to 2014). But the number of unfillable positions has also risen sharply: according to Unioncamere-Excelsior forecasts, the expected entries in the accommodation, catering and tourism services sector last year amounted to more than 1 million 167 thousand, equal to 21.2% of the total number of hirings expected by Italian companies. Compared to 2019, when there were just over 854 thousand entries, the difficulty of recruiting has grown exponentially: the rate of untraceable profiles for companies operating in the sector has risen from 24.6% (2019) to 51.8% (2024), while the number of untraceable workers has almost tripled, from 210 thousand to 604 thousand. And in the first half of 2025 Excelsior forecast 647 thousand hires in the sector, 12.5% more than in 2024.

A report by the Fondazione Studi Consulenti del Lavoro, 'Employment in tourism, between opportunities and growth limits', based on ISTAT data, shows that what is lacking are mainly cooks (61.7% of cases), pastry chefs and ice cream makers (59.8%), waiters (54.7%), bartenders (50.6%) and, even more, food production and preparation technicians (76.4%). The difficulty particularly concerns the regions that have seen a growth in the need for figures in the hospitality sector in recent years: such as Sicily, Calabria and Sardinia. On the other hand, the regions with the highest levels of mismatch between demand and supply of labour are in the Centre-North: Molise (66.6% of the profiles judged unavailable by companies), Umbria (61.1%), Trentino Alto Adige (58.4%), Lazio (58.1%), Piedmont and Val D'Aosta (55.7%).

The sector suffers from structural criticalities that risk compromising its attractiveness from an employment point of view: among the main factors are the high incidence of irregular work, which still characterises 13.5% of employment in the sector, the seasonality of employment relationships, the intensity of activities, and a quality of employment supply that, in many cases, remains at modest levels. Also weighing negatively is the systemic absence of suitable training paths that produce qualified personnel to an extent appropriate to the demands, seasonality and intensity of work.