Italy salaries stagnate but billionaires get an extra 150 million a day

Over the past year, the wealth of Italian billionaires has increased, in real terms, at the rate of EUR 150 million per day, totalling EUR 54.6 billion, while the spread of poverty among rented families, especially those with children or of foreign origin, has increased. This is what emerges from an analysis by Oxfam (an acronym for Oxford Committee for Famine Relief, an international confederation of non-profit organisations dedicated to reducing global poverty) which denounces "unsustainable wealth gaps". The study, published on the eve of the World Economic Forum in Davos - reports that today the richest five per cent of Italian households own half of the national wealth and in 15 years have benefited from 91 per cent of the increase in national wealth, while the poorest half of the population has received just 2.7 per cent.

Meanwhile, real wages are still below pre-Covid levels: between 2019 and 2024, the cumulative loss in purchasing power of contractual wages stands at 7.1 percentage points. And for 2025, only a modest recovery of just +0.5 percentage points is estimated. "Wage stagnation is not loosening its grip and is accompanied by the long-term growth of wage inequality and the incidence of the working poor. Between 1990 and 2018, the share of low-paid employees in the private sector rose from 26.7 per cent to 31.1 per cent," it reads.

Inequality in the distribution of net incomes in Italy, according to Oxfam's analysis, is set to worsen in 2023 (the last year for which figures are ascertained). Italy remains relegated to 20th place among the EU27 in terms of the egalitarian profile of income distribution. By 2024, estimates of the redistributive impact of the government's policies point to a further resurgence of income inequality, attributable solely to the worsening of the lowest incomes.

Discouraging stagnation "The first two years of the Meloni government," the statement reads, "also return a picture of discouraging stagnation of absolute poverty in Italy: more than 2.2 million households for a total of 5.7 million individuals in 2024 did not have sufficient monthly resources to purchase a basket of goods and services essential to live in decent conditions. The alarming immutability of the phenomenon in the last two years, on the tail of a portentous growth in poverty since 2014, appears set to continue in the coming years according to the same government forecasts." Oxfam calls for "measures for a fairer tax system, policies that restore power, dignity and value to work, a welfare system with a universalist vocation" starting with a minimum income scheme for anyone in need and organic policies to support housing with adequate multi-year investments.