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From manufacturing to healthcare and catering: here are the sectors that lost workers and those that gained them

According to ISTAT, from 2007 to 2024 industry lost 700,000 jobs, but employment in Italia grew thanks to sectors such as healthcare, social assistance, catering and professional activities

by Pietro Menzani

3 June 2026

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

2' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

Industry employs fewer and fewer workers. Despite this, as the annual report of ISTAT points out, employment in Italia is growing thanks to the increasing relevance of other sectors, from catering to social assistance.

Indeed, the study shows that in recent years the labour market has been experiencing drastic changes that are reshaping the distribution of human capital in different production areas.

The Industry Crisis

According to ISTAT, from 2007 to 2024 700,000 jobs disappeared in Italian industry, more than one in six. The same fate seems to have befallen shops and public offices: manufacturing, commerce and the public administration have lost a total of 1.35 million workers.

Within the manufacturing sector, it is in the textile-clothing industry that the worst performance in terms of employment is recorded, with a 40% decrease in the number of workers between 2007 and 2024. This is followed - also due to greater exposure to competition from emerging economies - by the wood, non-metallic mineral processing and rubber and plastic goods industries.

Compared to 2018, the manufacturing output index for the wood industry shrank by 8.6 per cent in 2025, while for the non-metallic mineral processing and rubber and plastic articles industries, the decline was 8.8 per cent.

The contraction of production

Italian industry is showing worrying signs of collapse. From the beginning of 2022 to the end of 2025 - partly due to the energy crisis linked to the war in Ukraine - the manufacturing production index recorded 36 months of trend contraction.

Expanding the time frame taken into consideration, the situation does not look any better. According to ISTAT, in fact, between 2018 and 2025, Italy's manufacturing output fell by 7.4%.

And while the other major European economies also showed signs of difficulty (Germany saw a 14.3 per cent drop and France a 3.1 per cent drop over the same period), the average of the EU countries, on the other hand, grew by 2.2 per cent. Poland and Belgium, for example, recorded increases of 32.9 per cent and 21.7 per cent respectively, while Spain remained stable, growing by 0.5 per cent.

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Growing sectors

The loss of jobs in industry, however, was offset by other sectors that gained almost two million employees instead. The sectors most affected by this increase are health and social work, professional, scientific and technical activities and accommodation and food services.

According to ISTAT, Italia has changed its production structure. A significant share of labour has shifted from manufacturing towards labour-intensive services but with modest or negative productivity growth. In fact, productivity in Italia has only grown by 1.4 per cent since 2007, while double-digit increases were recorded in Germany (+11 per cent) and Spain (+18 per cent) during the same period.

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