European Commission: even employed are getting poorer and poorer in Italy

A report of the EU Commission says Italy is the country with the worst social situation. Shadow economy and atypical contracts grew, while 12 percent of workers cannot make their living with their salaries. Andor “one in four Europeans are at risk”

We are getting poorer and poorer, literally. In most cases, being employed does not even mean you can escape poverty. The 2013 Employment and Social Developments Report, presented in the morning by the European Employment Commissioner László Andor. “One in four Europeans are at risk of poverty,” said the Commissioner. The situation is serious for almost every member state, and acute for a few – Italy included.

In Italy “poverty is growing, not just unemployment,” said Andor during the presentation of the report. In Italy and Spain, in fact, in-work poverty rate has risen more than in any other country, above 12% in both, with the exception of Greece and Romania, where structurally high in-work-poverty rates have persisted throughout the crisis.

We cannot say that having a job necessarily equates with a decent standard of living, then, given that precarious, underpaid or occasional jobs registered an exponential growth. In detail, in Italy the size of the shadow economy accounted to 21.1 percent (as percentage of total GDP), undeclared work to 12 percent (share of GDP or employment), and informal workers were 22.4 percent (as percentage of extended labour force).

Social protection policies are supposed to help when in trouble: “Politicians need to pay attention not only to job creation, but also to the quality of jobs and to the social support to be given to family – even those where family members are employed – in order to reduce poverty,” stressed Andor. Well, this happens more and more frequently, especially in Italy: the share of individuals not receiving income support is particularly large, with more than 40 percent of those living in jobless and poor households receiving no social transfers. Only Cyprus and Greece have worse performances (about 70 percent). By contrast, this share is about 29% at EU level.

Letizia Pascale