The average working life in Italy is among the lowest in Europe. Worse only Romania

The average working life in Italy is among the lowest in Europe. Only Romania is worse. This is what the survey dedicated to 'Demography, employment and welfare - Italy in the European context' carried out by CNA Area Studi e Ricerche highlights. According to the report, this is the landmine that, in spite of thirty years of pension reforms, remains lodged under the national public welfare accounts.

The problem is that young people enter work late. The average length of working life in Italy is 32.8 years. At the other end of the scale is the Netherlands (43.8 years), the most 'virtuous' on this front, with Sweden (43 years) and Denmark (42.5 years) making up the podium. Against an average of 37.2 years of working life in the Europe of twenty-seven countries, among our 'peers' Germany comes in at 40 years, France at 37.2 years (perfectly average, then) and Spain a little below, at 36.5 years. If we look at the composition of employment by age group in the four main continental economies, it emerges that in 2024 the share of jobs occupied by young people aged between 15 and 24 in Italy was just 4.7% of the total against 10.1% in Germany, 9.1% in France and 6% in Spain.

According to Cna (National Confederation of Craftsmen and Small and Medium Enterprises), it is essential to reverse this trend not only to ensure the sustainability of the social security system but also to avoid the disintegration of a production system in difficulty due to the lack of generational turnover. And to reverse this trend, micro and small enterprises cannot be ignored. Numbers in hand, in fact, micro and small enterprises represent the segment of the Italian production system that is most oriented towards the employment and professional growth of young people. In Italy, in micro enterprises in particular, i.e. companies with fewer than ten employees, 22.4% of employees are under thirty years of age. This represents the highest share among companies by size, where the presence of young people is gradually decreasing, reaching just 12% of employees in large companies with more than 250 employees.