Industry share in GDP drops to 18.1 per cent: it was 19.9 per cent pre Covid
The figures for the third quarter 2024 (-0.9%) are only the latest stage in a long decline
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Key points
3' min read
More and more down. The Stellantis case is only the most visible phenomenon of a broader process: one that threatens to take the form of a structural decline of industry in Italy (and Europe). Here, industry's share of GDP continues to fall. In a silent but steady decline that is changing the connotations of the national economy; and is making it increasingly dependent on services, with all the consequences (yet to be measured) on employment quality, wages, innovation, productivity. That is, in practice, on all the factors that decide development.
The quarterly accounts released on Monday by Istat with the final estimates on the dynamics of July, August and September mark only the last (so far) stage of a long journey. This summer, industry in the narrow sense, i.e. the secondary sector excluding construction, generated added value of 78.639 billion (in chain-linked values with reference year 2020).
The figure is 0.9 per cent below the levels of the previous three months, while compared to the same period last year, the decline is 1.7 per cent. But in addition to the classic tendential and structural comparisons, it is the long-term trends that clearly show the slide in Italian manufacturing production. Because for industry, in brutal summary, the Covid is not over. And the return to pre-pandemic levels completed by the country already last year remains a still ambitious goal.
In fact, the quarterly figure is 2.9% below that recorded in the same period of 2019, and the differential is similar (-2.23%) if we widen the look to the entire period from January to the end of September. In practice, only agriculture did worse than industry (-3.9% compared to 2019), whose long-term crisis is surrounded by a substantial silence that can be explained by the now marginal weight of the primary sector on the overall Italian GDP.
For industry, however, it is different. Or rather, it should be. Because even manufacturing and the like are seeing their weight in the total national economy shrink month by month, now at 18.2% compared to 19.9% four years ago. But their role remains central, especially if one wants to remain hooked on the leading group of developed countries.
