Wages, 6.2 million workers earn less than EUR 1,000 per month

Low wages in Italy under the spotlight of the CGIL, which in a dedicated study points out that poor work and low wages in general represent one of the main Italian problems, as well as a very controversial topic in the political, economic and trade union debate in Italy. The study on wages in which Inps data is processed shows that in 2023 (the year taken as a reference) more than 6.2 million workers received less than 15 thousand euro gross (35.7%). The average salary for the private sector was EUR 23.7 thousand.

In 2023, approximately 10.9 million employees in the private sector excluding domestic servants and agricultural workers, or 62.7 per cent of the total, had a gross annual salary of less than EUR 25,000. The study looks at private sector workers who had at least one working day in the year (17.4 million) and therefore also takes into account those who only worked for a period of the year or did so part time. The average number of days worked in the year is 246.

For workers with a permanent contract (including part-timers) the average gross salary was EUR 28,540 while for those with fixed-term contracts, again including part-timers, the average gross salary was EUR 10,302. Full-time workers (including both those with a stable contract and those with a fixed-term relationship) had an average salary of EUR 29,508 while part-time workers had an average salary of EUR 11,782. The CGIL also points out that workers who combine the two conditions (fixed-term and part-time) suffer a double penalty that further lowers their average annual gross salary (EUR 7.1 thousand). 'Part-time and fixed-term contracts, together with the strong work discontinuity,' the union points out, 'determine an overall lowering of the average annual gross salary'.

In the private sector, excluding domestic servants and agricultural workers, there are approximately 2.8 million employees with an hourly wage of less than EUR 9.5 in the first two deciles of the distribution. Excluding the approximately 400,000 workers who in the month under consideration (October 2023) were on maternity leave, sick leave, redundancy funds (so-called 'protected events') and for whom low wages are determined by these conditions, there are approximately 2.4 million employees with a structural condition of hourly wages below EUR 9.5. These include mainly apprentices, workers with fixed-term contracts, and employees in small enterprises. In addition, part-time workers and foreigners have a significantly higher incidence in the first two deciles than in the total number of employees. According to the Inps Observatory on the basis of which the data processed by CGIL were extracted, the percentage of employees in the private sector with salaries below 25,000 euro has in any case decreased from 65% in 2022 to 62.7% in 2023.