Liguria: 3,000 fewer retail businesses in six years and 443 million gone up in smoke

Over the course of six years, Liguria has lost nearly 3,000 retail businesses, with 443 million going up in smoke. This is the finding of a study by Confesercenti based on data spanning from 2019 to 2025. During this period, according to the association, there has been a widespread decline in the number of businesses, ‘in line with the national trend but also highlighting unique local employment dynamics, such as the closure of self-employed businesses and the growth in salaried employment, which underscore a profound structural change’.

In just six years, therefore, Confesercenti points out, ‘over 111,000 retail businesses have disappeared, across Italy, and 2,952 in Liguria alone, representing an 11.8 per cent reduction in the regional total and an estimated loss of wealth amounting to 443 million euros from Sarzana to Ventimiglia. The number of registered retail businesses, the report notes, ‘is falling across the whole of Liguria, reflecting a widespread difficulty in the sector’. In Italia, businesses in regional capitals have seen a fall of 14.3 per cent; those in the provinces, a fall of 13.4 per cent; and the North-West alone has seen a fall of 12.3 per cent.

Looking in more detail at the provinces of Liguria, ‘La Spezia has been the hardest hit, with a 16.4 per cent decline in the number of businesses at provincial level and a 16.9 per cent decline in the provincial capital alone – figures worse than the national average. Savona follows with a fall of 14.8 per cent across the province and 12.5 per cent in the provincial capital.” Meanwhile, “Genoa and Imperia have held up relatively well: the former recorded a contraction of 9.9 per cent across the province as a whole and 9.4 per cent in the provincial capital, showing slightly greater resilience than the Italian average. The latter recorded the smallest decline in the provincial capital, at -6.4 per cent, whilst losing 11.2 per cent across the entire province.”

According to Confesercenti, the decline in the number of businesses ‘is reflected in the total number of employees, but masks a very strong internal trend: the consolidation into larger companies or chains, which take on employees, at the expense of small, independent retailers and without, however, offsetting the loss of jobs: the overall balance remains negative, both in terms of growth and employment’.

Whilst, in Italia and the North-West, the total number of employees in regional capitals is rising (by 1 per cent and 3.4 per cent respectively), all the regional capitals in Liguria are recording a decline in the total number of employees: La Spezia –12.5 per cent, Imperia –5.4 per cent, Genoa –3.9 per cent and Savona –3.7 per cent. Looking more broadly at the provinces as a whole, there is a marked increase in the number of employees across almost the whole of Liguria: Imperia stands out with a 13.5 per cent rise in the number of employees at provincial level, followed by Genoa (5.4 per cent) and La Spezia (3.8 per cent). Only the province of Savona recorded a slight decline (-0.8 per cent). These figures are, however, below the national trend, which shows a 10.2 per cent increase in the number of employees. Self-employment in the retail sector, on the other hand, has plummeted across the board. Across the Ligurian provinces, the figures range from -14.6 per cent in Genoa to -21.1 per cent in La Spezia (with Imperia at -15.9 per cent and Savona at -19.7 per cent), compared with a national decline of -17.7 per cent.