Digital, Istat: Italy lags behind on skills, below EU average in 2023

In 2023 in our country, only 45.9 per cent of adults have adequate digital skills, more than a third (36.1 per cent) have insufficient skills and 5.1 per cent, despite being Internet users, have no skills at all. This was revealed by a survey by Istat, adding that in the European panorama, Italy is one of the countries with the lowest share of people with at least basic digital skills, with a distance from the EU27 average of almost 10 percentage points. Compared to 2021, there is a slight increase in the share of European citizens with these skills (+1.6 percentage points), the most evident increase being in Hungary with +10 percentage points.

Moreover, in Italy, as in other European countries, digital competences are associated with the socio-cultural characteristics of the population. In particular, in our country 59.1% of young people aged between 16 and 24 have at least basic skills in the five domains, against only 19.4% of adults aged between 65 and 74. The gap between the youngest and the oldest is in line with the European average, but Italy presents values well below the EU27 in all age groups. Digital skills are also characterised by gender disparities in favour of men in almost all European countries (in Italy, equal to 3.1 percentage points). The female disadvantage, however, is only present from the age of 45, while up to the age of 44 women are found to possess more digital skills than men.

The main discriminating factor along with age is the level of education: in Italy, among people with a university degree, 74.1% have at least basic digital skills and for this segment of the population the gap with the EU27 average narrows to -5.7 percentage points, while among people with a low educational qualification, at least the secondary school leaving certificate (22.6%) the distance with the EU27 average is 11 percentage points

The highest share of employees with at least basic digital skills, Istat continues, is observed in information and communication services and in financial and insurance activities (around 80 per cent), while the sectors where the greatest lag is observed are those of agriculture, forestry and fishing (32.5 per cent) and construction (43.8 per cent). ICT training for local government staff is on the rise: the share of staff trained in this area between 2018 and 2022 rose from 16.9 per cent to 23.9 per cent.

The number of people employed in ICT professions is still increasing, but less than in the EU. In Italy, according to the Rilevazione sulle forze di lavoro (Labour Force Survey), 970,000 people will be employed in occupations that fall under the aggregate of ICT specialists in 2023. The target is to reach 1.7 million by 2030. In comparison to 2022, ICT specialists grew by 8 per cent, compared to 2.1 per cent of total employment. The progress in recent years has been remarkable (155 thousand, +19% compared to 2019), but lower than in the EU27 as a whole (+24.1%) and in most Member States. Italy, therefore, in four years drops from 17th to 24th position in the Union in terms of the incidence of ICT specialists on the total number of employees, despite the fact that this has increased from 3.5% to 4.1%. Among other things, we note a persistently modest female presence, in an employment context that is in any case characterised by a male dominance: in 2023, women accounted for 15.7 per cent, against 19.4 per cent for the EU27 average. In this case, the progress compared to 2019 was 0.6 points in Italy and 1.6 points in the EU27, widening the gap.