1
Low wages, employees and employers in Italy: a longitudinal
analysis
Paola Anitori, Carlo De Gregorio, Annelisa Giordano – ISTAT
[email protected], [email protected], [email protected] 1
Table of contents
Executive summary ........................................................................................................................................... 2
Introduction ....................................................................................................................................................... 3
Sources, methodological aspects and concepts ................................................................................................. 3
Part 1. Incomes from dependent employment ................................................................................................... 5
1.1. Italian employees during years 2015-2022 ........................................................................................ 5
1.2. Distributions by sector and main socio-demographic characteristics. .................................................. 10
1.3 Per capita earnings ................................................................................................................................. 13
Part 2. Employees with low earnings in industry and services between 2015 and 2022 ................................. 16
2.1 Gross earnings and their components .................................................................................................... 16
2.1. The evolution of annual gross earnings ................................................................................................ 18
2.3. The employees with low earnings ........................................................................................................ 20
2.4. Employees with low earnings on a longitudinal perspective ................................................................ 23
2.4. Employees who escaped the low-wage trap ......................................................................................... 27
2.5. Employees who never succeeded to escape the low-earnings trap ....................................................... 30
Part 3. Employers and low earnings ................................................................................................................ 34
3.1. Business structure, employment and employees .................................................................................. 34
3.2. Employers and gross earnings .............................................................................................................. 35
3.3. Employers and employees with low earnings ...................................................................................... 39
3.5. The enterprises and the employees who escape from the trap of low earnings .................................... 40
3.6. The enterprises and the employees in trap of low earnings .................................................................. 42
Concluding remarks ......................................................................................................................................... 43
References ....................................................................................................................................................... 44
1 The authors are the only responsible for the content and the opinions expressed in this work, which do not involve at
any rate Istat. They wish to thank the colleagues of Istat, and in particular those in the unit PSV (Giovanni Battista Arcieri,
Lucia Coppola, Tiberio Damiani, Stefano De Santis, Daniela Ichim, Isabella Siciliani, Anna Maria Sgamba, Fabio
Spagnuolo) with whom they shared the current work on the income register, and the colleagues working at the Population
register and at the Business register; and those in charge of data collection, for their indispensable work
2
Executive summary
This experimental exhaustive analysis of the Italian regular labour incomes is based on the integrated use of
Istat statistical registers on income, population and businesses, and on microdata from social security records.
The observed time span is 2015-2022.
Part 1. Labour incomes from employee jobs
Between 2015 and 2022 real per capita labour income of 21 million Italian employees decreased significantly.
COVID19-pandemic and 2022 inflation are mostly responsible for this trend, although even before 2020 the
structural weakness of dependent work produced a sluggish income dynamics.
A large share of employees shows very low labour income levels, with 25% of employees barely above 10,000
euro in 2022 and a half of them below 20,000 euro (at constant 2015 prices).
Low-earnings mostly originates from the private sectors. Let alone agriculture and domestic workers, where
low incomes and undeclared work coexist, industry and services produce a large portions of low-earnings.
The distribution of incomes in the public sectors is less critical, although public employment witnessed a
constant reduction in real gross earnings in the first part of the period, with a decrease of about 2,000 euro (-
7%) in its median level between 2015 and 2020.
The structural weakness of incomes is also reflected in the gender gap, especially in the private sectors.
Between 2015 and 2022 it has been only slightly reduced, more often in presence of higher education level.
Part 2. Employees with low earnings in industry and services between 2015 and 2022
Yearly gross earnings (YGE) declined in real terms: in general YGE were hit by the increased adoption of
labour contracts of lower quality, namely short-term and part-time jobs, although in 2022 the effect on inflation
worsened the situation.
A substantial and rather stable share of employees dropped in the low-wage areas, especially low YGE,
essentially due to the low-intensity of jobs. This affected their personal incomes with severe consequences
even at the household level.
Over the entire period, about 60 per cent of employees in 2022 experienced at least one year under the low-
pay thresholds. In particular, only a minor share of these employees managed to bring their pay back above
the thresholds, usually through better quality contractual conditions. A larger portion of the others either exited
the status of employment or never succeeded to get rid of the “low pay trap" permanently.
The tie between standard jobs and the level of hourly wages inevitably implies that the firms providing better
pay conditions are also those where full-time, permanent jobs prevail. This is a relatively small subset of firms
although they are large enough to involve an important amount of non-agricultural workforce; these firms
belong to the more advanced service and industry activities where average hourly wage is set above 15 euros.
Part 3. Employers and low-earnings
Apart from wage levels, operating on the wage spectrum is possible only by acting on job intensity through
part-time and fixed-term contracts. Low-paid employees gradually experience lower intensities and durations,
while hourly wages remain quite below the average.
Micro-enterprises and individual firms produce very low per capita annual earnings due to lower levels of all
the wage components: lower hourly earnings and lower intensity and duration of jobs.
The economic activities with a high propensity to pay low wages emerge quite clearly. Most of them belong
to services. In Horeca and recreation, heavily affected by undeclared work, more than two employees out of
three is below YGE threshold. In support services, education and other household services more than 50% of
employees have low annual earnings.
Quitting low-pay sectors is generally the only way to escape low earnings, in as much as there are a few
sectors there may be better opportunities to improve pay conditions. A higher propensity to change employer
and economic activity is thus associated to improvements in earnings.
3
Introduction
In Italy, the level and distribution of employees’ labor earnings has been at the center of a both academic and
political debate, sometimes messy and mainly focused on the opportunity to set a minimum wage, generally
intended as a minimum threshold of hourly earnings. This attention derives from the fact that Italy, at present,
is among the five EU countries without a legal minimum wage. Although the European Parliament Directive
2022/2041 on adequate minimum wages does not compel Italy to enforce it by law, due to the high coverage
rate of collective bargaining, the issue has remained on top of the agenda of the public debate. Most of the
analyses emphasize the presence of a large share of low-wage workers in the private sector, and often stress
the importance of disentangling all the components determining the wage level. The spread of non-standard
forms of regular dependent employment – in particular part-time and short-term contracts - makes it
compelling to look into annual and monthly earnings by separating the effects due to hourly earnings (once
clearly defined) from those due to working time. This means going beyond hourly earnings (the usual target
of minimum wage proposals) to take more properly into account the income flows deriving from earnings2.
This paper does not enter directly into this debate nor into the details of what kind of minimum wage should
or should not be introduced or what the exact definition of wage should be considered. Based on previous
researches conducted in Istat on the quality and on the earnings of employees3, it tries to provide details and
descriptive evidence on a longitudinal perspective (2015-2022) regarding a wide range of issues that surround
the more general theme of incomes from dependent employment. Many tables and charts are used in order to
document the empirical evidence of our investigations, and are founded on the experimental use of large scale
databases such as Istat statistical registers on incomes, population and businesses. The integrated use of those
registers offers uncountable opportunities to deepen the analysis and to describe exhaustively the topic of
incomes from employment, with special attention to low incomes. A short premise provides a general overview
of the statistical sources used in this paper and of the methodological context and concepts through which our
analyses are developed.
Part 1 of the paper is dedicated to employees’ labour incomes. The analysis mainly focuses on some
distributive aspects and it is based on individual data for more than 20 million employees, examined by
domain4: public sector and private sector, separately for industry and services, agriculture and domestic
workers. In this section we show the heterogeneity of incomes, and provide some insights on the low income
areas. In Part 2 the attention is shifted towards the gross earnings coming from the private non-agriculture
sectors, the largest and most heterogeneous set of Italian employees. Here the analysis targets notional (or
contractual) earnings in order to disentangle their nature independently from the windfall factors influencing
effective labour earnings. The elementary components of gross earnings are thus investigated with reference
to the nature of labour contracts: hourly earnings and working time components are jointly analysed in order
to determine which effects lay behind the areas of low earnings. Longitudinal data in the eight-year period
2015-2022 helped us to characterize the cohorts of employees who succeeded to escape from the low earnings
trap and those who never came out from low earnings conditions. Part 3 finally extends the analysis of part 2
in order to find evidences on the characteristics of employers and their role in generating poor employment
conditions. At the end of the paper some conclusions are drawn and some of the numberless areas of further
research are evidenced.
Sources, methodological aspects and concepts
In this paper, we integrate anonymized microdata from Istat statistical registers and administrative data. In
particular, the population register reports for each individual some basic demographic information concerning
2 Bavaro 2022, Bavaro, Raitano 2023, Crettaz,Bonoli 2010, Filandri, Struffolino 2019, Grimshaw 2011, Hallerod et al.
2015, Jansson et al. 2020, Marucci, De Minicis 2019, Ministero del lavoro 2021, Raitano et al.2019.
3 Anitori, Arcieri, et al. 2019, Anitori, De Gregorio et al. 2019, De Gregorio, Giordano 2014, 2016, De Gregorio,
Giordano, Siciliani 2021, Istat 2019, 2022, 2023.
4 A lot of hints concerning the analysis of employees’ incomes have been inspired by Atkinson (2008), though our rich
database pushed us towards a more descriptive approach.
4
age, gender, citizenship and educational level. Additional information identifies the individuals resident in
Italy, flagging those who are resident in private households. The available data used in the paper range from
2015 to 2022 and we refer to residents in private households at 31 December of each year5. Thus, we exclude
from the analysis all employees not belonging to resident population6. We also exclude the entrepreneurs who
are employees in the same enterprise they own and all the individuals who are in old-age pension schemes. In
some analysis we also restrict the observed population to those aged 15-64 years.
The income register also refer to years 2015-2022 and it is structured in modules7: in this paper we focus on
gross labour incomes that include social contributions paid by the worker and income taxes8. We partitioned
the employees in four subgroups depending on the nature of the employer: public sector, private industry and
services9, private agriculture and domestic workers (where, though, the employer is a private household). This
partitioning, especially when referred to public administrations and private businesses, is based upon criteria
that might not correspond exactly with the official allocation of economic units used in S13: this drawback
will be soon avoided through the integration with Istat labour register. In the paper we will also experiment a
provisional allocation of labour incomes by type of employer as provided by the business register. Moreover
we will also use data from the specific module of the income register where total disposable income is
estimated, a module mainly based on tax reports integrated with other non-taxable incomes, and from the
module on pensions used to identify and exclude the retirees from the analysis. All the information we derive
from the income register is referred to regular incomes and does not include irregular incomes deriving from
irregular jobs or from irregularly worked hours within regular jobs (as in the case of false part-time jobs10). It
is useful to remind that, in the case of dependent employment, the irregularity rate is estimated by National
Accounts over 11%, with peaks of 32% in agriculture and more than 50% in domestic services. This
information should be kept in mind where examining the results described in Part 1 of the paper. According to
the most recent report from the Ministry of Economy and Finance, in 2020 the tax gap deriving from dependent
employment was 2.4% corresponding to 3.9 billion euro, to be added to an additional amount of 10.9 billion
euro of gap in social contributions, 2.5 billion of which to be paid by the workers11.
Table 1
5 The age of individuals is referred to 31 December of the year.
6 About 250 thousands individuals, 0.02% of business register employment. Large part of them has very short labour
contracts.
7 Modules relate to labour income (regular and irregular), pensions, non-pension monetary transfers and taxes.
8 Istat income register follows quite steadily the guidelines fixed in Unece Canberra Handbook (Unece 2011).
9 Often we shall refer for simplicity to these activities as “industry and service” omitting their private nature.
10 De Gregorio, Giordano (2014).
11 Ministero dell’Economia (2023). Notice that in the case of self-employment, the estimated income tax gap was 69.7%
in 2020.
Rate of non regular employment by economic activity. Year 2021
Economic activity %
Agricolture 32,0
Industry 4,8
Construction 14,3
Trade 5,5
Transportation 5,8
Horeca 14,9
Information 3,8
Finance 2,3
Other business services 6,1
Education 4,9
Human health 5,1
Recreation 19,4
Domestic services 51,8
Total 11,3
Source: Istat, National accounts
5
The business register is referred to 2015-202112. It contains structural business statistics data on the enterprises
of industry and services. There are about 4,5 million units in this domain, 1.5 million of which had at least one
employee enrolled in some part of the year. From this register we also derive structural (NACE, size,
governance) and performance indicators (profit and loss accounts) of each business. In particular, from the
associated linked employer-employee register we also draw some information on those business owners
enrolled as employees in the same enterprise they own.
Detailed data on the employees in industry and services, and in particular on their jobs and labour contracts,
are derived from original social security data. From this source, it is possible to classify jobs according to
qualitative and quantitative data, like gross earnings, gross hourly earnings, and contractual working time.
Earnings in particular include social contributions paid by the worker and income taxes. We deliberately chose
to concentrate on the individual variables defined in labour contracts in order to exclude all the events affecting
effective gross earnings (like for instance overtime or labour retention schemes). These notional earnings are
analysed in Part 2 and 3. The analysis in Part 1 on the contrary based on effective (and strictly) labour incomes
and this explains why, for example, the effects of the pandemic come out there so clearly. In Part 2 and Part 3
where we focus on the quality of jobs by considering pay and duration of labour contracts, the extraordinary
slump in 2020 labour earnings is much less visible.
Part 1. Incomes from dependent employment
1.1. Italian employees during years 2015-2022
Between 2015 and 2022, the number of individuals involved in dependent employment grew consistently in
Italy though the level and dynamics of their labour incomes have been overall weak and could not resist the
double impact of the pandemic and the inflation. Although these events were quite recent, the weakness of
employees’ gross incomes appeared quite clearly also in the first part of that period: 25% of employees could
count on slightly more than 10.000 euro in the year before pandemics, and half of them hardly achieved 20
thousand euro (Table 1.1).
According to Istat income register, in 2022 there were about 21 million individuals with incomes from
employee jobs in Italy, accounting for a total of more than 460 billion euro in labour gross earnings13.
Compared to 2015, when there were just over 18 million employees, total earnings increased by 6.1 per cent,
recovering the sharp decline in 2020 due to the pandemic. Between 2021 and 2022, however, this catch-up has
been partially eroded by inflation: HICP grew in fact by 8.8% in 2022, and as a whole by 14.2% since 2015.
As a result, average per capita income in 2022 was at the lowest level (just over 22,000 euro) of the entire time
span, lower even than in the year of the pandemic.
The distribution of per capita annual gross earnings shows quite heterogeneous dynamics depending on the
income level. In 2015, for example, the median annual gross earning was slightly above 21,000 euro; in
subsequent years, median income suffered a slight erosion until 2019 and a conspicuous slowdown during
pandemics, while 2022 inflation nullified the partial recovery registered the year before. The labour incomes
laying above the median were, in general, progressively more resilient to the effects of pandemics, loosing
purchasing power only when inflation picked up; during 2020, job retention schemes were in fact applied more
intensively to individuals in the medium and lower wage classes14 and this helped them to preserve their
incomes. Lower deciles, on the other hand have shown substantial resilience over time (with the exception of
12 The 2022 version was made available late march 2024, too late for this paper.
13 According to the definitions adopted in the income register, and derived from the Canberra Manual (Unece 2011),
labour income from dependent employment consists in the flows actually accruing to the employee from the employer,
gross of income tax and of social contributions charged on employees, excluding any transfer for social security purposes
but including job retention schemes. In this sense, in Part 1, we use the terms labour income and gross earnings as
synonyms. All values referred to in this section are at constant prices 2015.
14 De Gregorio et al. (2021).
6
2020), especially with respect to inflationary pressures perhaps due to the likely impossibility of further
earnings compression.
On the other hand, over the period under observation, the growth in the number of employees came with some
appreciable changes in the composition of this workforce (Table 1.2). In 2015, more than 70 per cent of Italian
regular employees were in the non-agricultural private sector, around 20 per cent in the public sector whilst
the rest was almost equally divided between agriculture and domestic work15. Over 60 per cent of employees
were between 35 to 54 years old, males prevailed over females by around 8 p.p. and the presence of workers
with foreign citizenship was limited to a modest 10 per cent. Almost half employees had an upper secondary
level of education, one third primary or lower secondary education, and the remaining 22 per cent a bachelor
or doctoral level16.
This picture has not changed much over time, or changed very slowly. In the overall period, the share of
employees in the non-agricultural private sector has increased by 2 p.p. as of 2022, notwithstanding the
difficulties due to pandemics in 2020 and partially in 2021. At that time, social protection measures avoided
mass redundancies but some personnel cuts occurred all the same17. In specular contrast, the share of
employees in the public sector lost more than 1 p.p. between 2015 and 2022. The share of agriculture, on the
other hand, remained more or less constant until 2020 - a year in which it grew slightly, benefiting from the
fact that agriculture was not subject to the economic lockdowns - and started to reduce from 2021. The share
of domestic workers18 declined steadily, with the exception of 2020 when layoffs were discouraged through
job retention.
Looking at the composition by age, we observe a progressive reduction of individuals in the middle aged
classes and a consequent increase in employees with 55 to 64 years. This trend was mainly caused by the
demographic ageing of the Italian population19. Also the number of new and younger employees progressively
increased, whilst the workers with 25-34 years decreased steadily up to 2020 and then showed a small recover
in the following years. Meanwhile, the presence of female remained substantially stable, with a slight increase
only at the end of the period. The share of employees with education above ISCED 3 also increased, quite
slowly though, while that of individuals with Italian citizenship slightly decreased.
If we divide the time span into two intervals, the first from 2015 to 2019 and the second from 2019 to 2022
(Table 1.3), we observe that in the first sub period the overall number of employees has grown by 1.9 per cent
but at the same time real per capita incomes did not move. This has been mainly due to the employees in
industry and services who, although grown in number by 2.5 per cent, registered an unchanged per capita
labour income. On the contrary, in the public sector the slight increase of the employees has been mirrored by
a slight reduction in per capita income. In agriculture, though, both the number of employees and per capita
YGE had increased, whilst domestic workers experienced a reduction in number but a growth of their incomes.
Looking at the dynamics by age group, between 2015 and 2019, there was a clear reduction in the number of
workers between the ages of 35 and 44 (with per capita gross earnings essentially unchanged) and an increase
in the extreme age classes, mostly due to the effect of demographic trends. It should be noted, however, that
per capita incomes of these classes shrunk, albeit slightly. The share of foreign employees from Africa and
Asia also increased, but only the former had suffered a reduction in the average income.
In the second sub-period from 2019 to 2022, total employment has increased by 1.6 per cent but per capita
gross earnings sharply declined by 2 per cent, and this contraction has been quite generalized. Public
employees suffered more than others the impact of inflation and pandemic: all age groups were affected, and
women more than men, regardless to occasional employment growth. Between 2019 and 2022, the average
15 From now on, we intend by domestic employees the personnel employed in activities of private households as
employers, corresponding to section T of NACE classification.
16 The data on the level of education are derived from the Population register, and the available series starts from 2018.
17 Most of them were probably retirements or voluntary exits.
18 The share of regular employees in agriculture and in the household sector is very small due to extensive use of
undeclared or 'grey' work for tax and social contributions evasion purposes.
19 See Istat 2023.
7
gross earnings of those with upper secondary education has also lost ground and this also happened to
immediately higher ISCED levels.
Table 1.1
Indicators 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
N. employees (000) 18.324 18.633 19.130 19.500 19.729 19.646 20.073 20.705
Index (2015=100) 100 101,7 104,4 106,4 107,7 107,2 109,5 113,0
Total Income (000) 433.721 446.619 449.720 459.541 466.108 443.232 466.207 460.128
Index (2015=100) 100 103,0 103,7 106,0 107,5 102,2 107,5 106,1
Per capita Income 23.669 23.970 23.509 23.566 23.625 22.561 23.226 22.223
Index (2015=100) 100 101,3 99,3 99,6 99,8 95,3 98,1 93,9
Percentiles
p5 2.658 2.768 2.651 2.648 2.683 2.424 2.565 2.615
p10 4.612 4.834 4.644 4.636 4.706 4.021 4.427 4.566
p15 6.572 6.941 6.657 6.652 6.746 5.683 6.305 6.568
p20 8.596 9.035 8.714 8.709 8.800 7.398 8.252 8.494
First quartile 10.546 10.996 10.654 10.651 10.775 9.216 10.184 10.335
p30 12.633 13.109 12.731 12.724 12.875 11.147 12.195 12.279
p35 14.887 15.407 14.972 14.949 15.096 13.230 14.353 14.260
p40 17.241 17.677 17.230 17.173 17.295 15.333 16.545 16.214
p45 19.383 19.681 19.268 19.209 19.279 17.394 18.608 17.950
Median 21.206 21.486 21.070 21.022 21.067 19.298 20.471 19.537
p55 22.823 23.079 22.684 22.712 22.725 21.148 22.199 21.024
p60 24.435 24.634 24.218 24.248 24.235 23.004 23.782 22.548
p65 26.153 26.264 25.846 26.012 25.923 24.816 25.490 24.083
p70 28.227 28.281 27.842 27.924 27.860 26.836 27.430 25.865
Third quartile 30.510 30.577 30.134 30.263 30.192 29.291 29.703 28.193
p80 33.085 33.186 32.774 33.069 32.979 32.183 32.476 30.940
p85 36.606 36.640 36.245 36.609 36.530 35.865 36.088 34.397
p90 42.109 42.043 41.646 41.844 41.909 41.376 41.617 39.560
p95 54.062 54.281 53.528 53.464 53.699 53.301 53.748 50.575
Sources: Istat, Income Register 2015-2022, Population Register 2015-2022
Notes: (a) Only indiv iduals w ith annual gross earnings ov er 1.000 Euro
Distribution of gross earnings of total employees (a) by year. Years 2015-2022 (values at constant prices
2015. Index: base 2015=100)
8
Table 1.2
Economic sector,
Demographic characters
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
ECONOMIC SECTOR (b)
Public sector 19,9 19,6 19,1 18,9 18,6 19,1 19,0 18,7
Private Industry and services 71,6 72,1 72,6 72,9 73,2 72,4 72,8 73,6
Agricolture 4,1 4,1 4,1 4,1 4,0 4,2 4,1 3,8
Domestic employees 4,1 4,0 3,9 3,8 3,7 4,0 3,9 3,6
AGE CLASS (c)
15-24 5,7 5,8 6,3 6,6 6,8 6,4 7,0 7,5
25-34 19,5 19,3 19,0 18,9 18,8 18,7 18,9 19,2
35-44 27,7 26,9 25,9 24,9 24,0 23,5 22,7 22,1
45-54 29,2 29,2 29,0 28,8 28,6 28,7 28,2 27,6
55-64 16,8 17,5 18,1 18,7 19,4 20,2 20,6 20,9
GENDER
Females 46,0 46,0 46,0 45,9 45,9 45,8 45,9 46,1
Males 54,0 54,0 54,0 54,1 54,1 54,2 54,1 53,9
EDUCATION LEVEL
Up to Lower secondary
education (ISCED 0-2)
31,0 30,3 29,3 28,7 27,6
Upper secondary education
(ISCED 3)
47,6 48,0 48,0 47,9 48,2
Up to short-cycle tertiary
education (ISCED 4-5)
5,6 6,0 6,0 6,6 6,9
Bachelor’s or equivalent level
(ISCED 6)
15,1 15,0 15,9 16,0 16,4
Up to PhD or their equivalent
level (ISCED 7-8)
0,7 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,9
CITIZENSHIP (by area)
Italians 89,5 89,7 89,6 89,5 89,3 89,0 89,1 89,0
EU 3,4 3,4 3,3 3,3 3,2 3,3 3,1 2,9
Extra-EU 2,5 2,4 2,3 2,3 2,3 2,3 2,2 2,2
Africa 1,6 1,6 1,7 1,8 2,0 2,1 2,2 2,3
Asia 2,2 2,2 2,3 2,3 2,4 2,6 2,5 2,6
Other 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,9 0,9 0,9
Total 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
Source: Istat, Income Register 2015-2022, Population Register 2015-2022
Total employees (a), by economic sector, main demographic characters and year. Years
2015-2022 (%)
Notes: (a) Only indiv iduals w ith annual gross earnings ov er 1.000 Euros at constant 2015 prices; (b) residual sectors dropped.
The sum does not add up to 100; (c) Only age classes w ith a share > 0.5%.The sum does not add up to 100
9
Table 1.3
N. employees
Per capita
earnings N. employees
Per capita
earnings
ECONOMIC SECTOR
Public sector 0,3 -0,2 1,9 -2,8
Private Industry and services 2,5 0,0 1,9 -2,0
Agricolture 1,4 2,0 0,0 0,9
Domestic employees -0,4 1,1 1,0 -0,7
AGE CLASS (b)
15-24 6,7 0,2 5,0 -1,1
25-34 0,9 0,7 2,3 -0,3
35-44 -1,7 -0,1 -1,2 -1,6
45-54 1,3 -0,1 0,4 -2,0
55-64 5,7 -0,6 4,0 -2,9
GENDER
Females 1,8 0,2 1,7 -1,8
Males 1,9 -0,2 1,5 -2,2
EDUCATION LEVEL (c )
Up to Lower secondary
education (ISCED 0-2) … … -1,4 -2,2
Upper secondary education
(ISCED 3) … … 1,8 -2,7
Up to short-cycle tertiary
education (ISCED 4-5) … … 6,8 -0,8
Bachelor’s or equivalent level
(ISCED 6) … … 4,6 -2,9
Up to PhD or their equivalent
level (ISCED 7-8) … … 6,8 -0,2
CITIZENSHIP (by area)
Italian 1,8 -0,1 1,5 -2,1
EU 0,1 3,4 -0,9 0,7
Europa extra-EU -0,3 2,1 0,3 0,1
Africa 6,9 -0,6 6,9 0,4
Asia 4,5 1,8 4,7 -0,7
Other 1,9 1,6 4,8 -0,4
Total 1,9 0,0 1,6 -2,0
Sources: Istat, Income Register 2015-2022, Population Register 2015-2022
Notes: (a) Only indiv iduals w ith annual gross earnings >1000 Euros; (b) Only age classes w ith share > 0.5%; (c ) ISCED classification groupings:
respectly 0-1-2, 3, 4-5, 6, 7-8
Economic sector,
Demographic characters
Employees and gross earnings (a) by year, economic sector and main demographic characters. Years
2015-2022 (Average annual rate of change)
2015-2019 2019-2022
10
1.2. Distributions by sector and main socio-demographic characteristics.
The distribution of employees’ incomes in the period under scrutiny reflects their structural weakness and has
also been strongly marked by the pandemic and inflation. Nevertheless, one of the most important aspects to
be underlined has to do with the heterogeneity of incomes by domain. the three domains in the private sectors
concentrate most of low income earners, while the public sector provide a sort of benchmark with relatively
stable and decent income levels, although at a standstill in nominal terms from the very initial years of the
period.
Chart 1.1 illustrates the distribution of employees by level of gross earnings20. Two elements are clearly
noticeable: compared to 2015, in the pandemic year the bulk of employees earning between 19,000 and 35,000
euro per year shrinked drastically. At the same time the number of individuals with gross earnings below 8,000
euro increased by one percentage point (around 1.9 million employees) and the number of those earning
between 11,000 and 19,000 euro by half a percentage point (around 900 thousand individuals). The effects of
job retention measures put in place by the Government to offset the effects of the lockdown are evident. The
partial recovery in 2021 returned the curve to roughly the initial shape in 2015, but a net shift towards lower
income classes occurred in 2022, quite generalized although with some distinguishes. The number of income
earners below 7,000 euro was stable, those between 7,000 and 25,000 euro increased sharply and those over
this threshold decreased a little, catching up the levels of 2020 again.
More interestingly, when examined by economic sector, the distribution of gross incomes reveals a large
heterogeneity (Chart 1.2). The public sector has a relatively concentrated distribution while in industry and
services there is a large portion of low and very low income owners. In agriculture and domestic services
incomes are indeed very low as compared to the other sectors, with very few employees above 10 thousands
euro on an annual basis.
The distribution by income class in the public sector appears strongly concentrated between 17,000 euro and
40,000 euro. The quasi-bell shape is multi-modal in the central part, each peak probably representing a subset
of employees with the same contractual conditions (and therefore very similar annual gross earnings): the
public sector, in fact, is characterised by stronger and more homogeneous rules in labour contracts that
discipline the different working profiles in different administration bodies. The curve shows a rather small
backward shift towards the lower classes in the year of the lockdown and a further, but sharper, shift of the
same negative sign in 2022 following the blow of inflation. In this case, the increase of individuals sliding
towards lower income classes is progressively more pronounced for those who earned more than 27,000 euro
in the previous year.
With regard to industry and services, in 2020 the increase in the number of workers who moved into lower
income classes is spread over almost all classes; this was due (as mentioned before) to job retention schemes
and to the interruption of lower quality jobs (especially short-term). The most evident increase regarded two
subgroups: those who fell down into the classes up to 10,000 euro and those between 13,000 and 20,000 euro.
In 2021, the distribution partly recovered the 2015 shape, except for the slight increase in the number of
workers with less than 10,000 euro, who continued to benefit from the social measures started the year before.
In 2022, on the other hand, the curve shows a polarisation between those (over 27,000 euro and under 7,000
euro) who maintained their status (albeit for different reasons) and those within this range who clearly
worsened their income conditions.
By restricting the view to the extreme years of the period, if one looks at cumulate distributions, several facts
are worth noticing (Chart 1.3). Firstly, the difference between the performance of the public and the private
sector in 2022: the cumulate curve for civil servants shows a drift to the left and, as mentioned above, the worst
performance is associated with income classes with more than 27,000 euro. The lowest quintile in 2015 was
about 21,000 euro and decreased to 17,000 euro in 2022. Similarly, the third decile decreased from 24,000 to
20 Income classes of 1,000 EUR (at constant prices 2015). Years from 2016 to 2019 have been omitted due to the
substantial similarity of their distributions to 2015.
11
21,000 euro and then the gap narrows as income increases. In industry and services, on the other hand, we see
a greater resilience among the income classes below 10,000 euro (possibly due to job retention schemes in act
until 2022) and a smoother effect on the rest of the income classes. A deterioration is evident mostly between
the median and the third quartile of the curve. In 2015, for instance, the sixth decile was at 22,000 euro whilst
in 2022 it went down to 20,000 euro.
The situation is different in agriculture where a partial improvement is detected in 2022 as the number of those
earning between 7,000 and 17,000 euro increases. This phenomenon should be better investigated but could
be linked to the partial emersion of undeclared or 'grey' jobs. A slight inversion of the trend can also be
observed in 2022 among domestic workers, although in this case it is much more contained: the rigidity of the
curve also indicates a very pronounced income compression, which could also in this case be linked to
phenomena of irregular work not captured by the data.
Chart 1.1. Distributions of Italian employees by gross earnings class and years (%, values in .000 euro at
constant prices 2015)
0,0
0,5
1,0
1,5
2,0
2,5
3,0
3,5
4,0
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
D
en
si
ty
%
Gross earnings (.000 euro)
Employees by gross earnings and year (values at constant 2015 prices)
2015 2020
2021 2022
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
D
en
si
ty
%
Gross earnings (.000 euro)
Employees by gross earnings and year (values at constant 2015 prices)
2015 2020
2021 2022
12
Chart 1.2. Distribution of Italian employees by sector, gross earnings class and years (%, values in .000 euro
at constant prices 2015)
Chart 1.3
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
D
en
si
ty
%
Gross earnings (at constant 2015 prices)
Public sector
2015 2020
2021 2022
0
1
2
3
4
5
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
D
en
si
ty
%
Gross earnings (at constants 2015 prices)
Private Industry and Services
2015 2020
2021 2022
0
2
4
6
8
10
12
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
D
en
si
ty
%
Gross earning (at constant 2015 prices)
Private Agricolture
2015 2020 2021 2022
0
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
1 4 7 10 13 16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58
D
en
si
ty
%
Gross earnings (at constant 2015 prices)
Domestic employees
2015 2020 2021 2022
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
1 3 5 7 9 11 13 15 17 19 21 23 25 27 29 31 33 35 37 39 41 43 45 47 49 51 53 55 57 59
%
Gross earnings (.000 euro, at constant 2015 prices)
Cumulate distribution of employees by sector and income class. Years 2015
and 2022
Public 2015
Public 2022
Private Industry and Services
2015
Private Industry and Services
2022
Agricolture 2015
Agricolture 2022
Domestic 2015
Domestic 2022
13
1.3 Per capita earnings
The public and the private side of dependent employment tell different stories and seem to represent opposite
realities, with structural differences which do emerge clearly also if we consider how labour incomes are
distributed. The weakness of private employees are actually quite structural, and this fact is revealed clearly if
we consider age and gender gaps. Incomes from employment often do not imply acceptable household
incomes, especially if agriculture and domestic workers are considered.
In 2022 the average gross earnings of an employee with 25 years was about 18,000 euro if working in the
public sector and about 14,000 euro in the private sector. For those who were 50 years old their respective
YGE was respectively about 32,000 and 26,000 euro. The age gap is very high, especially in industry and
services while it is lower in agriculture (9,200 vs. 10,300 euro) and among domestic workers (7,700 vs 8,300
euro), where earnings are very thin and there are no meaningful age gaps.
The analysis so far has shown that between 2015 and 2022, given the almost stable employment structure, the
main cause of the deterioration in the income conditions of Italian employees has depended more on inflation
than on pandemics. The trend in per capita gross earnings confirms a net reduction between 2015 and 2022 for
employees in all age classes, especially in the public sector (Chart 1.4). In 2020 the deterioration of per capita
levels for public employees was particularly sharp for those over 45 years, but further deterioration happened
in 2022, this time affecting all ages. In industry and services the reduction in per capita income in 2022
resembles the trend shown in 2020 although people with 25-34 years appear to be better off in 2022.
In agriculture, on the contrary, per capita levels increase both in 2020 and in 2022 regardless of pandemic or
of the inflation boost: in particular, in 2022 they increase more than in 2020 for those below 45 years. Among
domestic workers per capita gross earnings increased in 2022 only up to the age of 38, is table up to 52 and
decreased steadily after that age.
As the estimates by gender and age indicate (Chart 1.5), it’s no surprise that women show generally lower pay
levels than their male colleagues: but the gap is definitely greater in the private sector and in agriculture than
in the public sector. Among domestic workers, where males are a minority, the gap between genders is smaller
and decreases with age.
In the public sector a 40 years old woman earned on average less than 24.000 euros per year, and the gap with
men is about 6.000 euros; it remains constant at least until the age of 60, and then narrows slightly. Among the
private employees, a woman in her 40s earns about 16.000 euro that is 8.000 euro less than a man of the same
age, but the gap widens as age increases. A similar trend can be seen in agriculture, although a woman in her
40s earns 8.000 euro and the gap with her male colleagues is about 3.000 euro. Among domestic workers the
gap remains constant at around 3.000 euro independently from ages, at least up to 58 years and then narrows
considerably.
Differences in per capita income by sex are quite remarkable also according to educational achievements.
Females with at most upper secondary education suffer the worst difference with the corresponding male
collegues (more than 7.000 euro) and this difference remains constant over the years (Table 1.4). Things
improve for more educated females: although in 2018 a female bachelor earns around 28,000 euro against
44,000 euro of an analogous male, the difference seems to start dropping in 2020 and more sharply in 2022.
The same happens for females with a master or a PhD. Females with lower levels of education, instead, are
constantly worse off in all years and no improvements have really occurred over time.
Since agriculture and domestic workers are traditionally the least educated, we limit the comparison by gender
and education level to the employees of the two main economic sectors (Table 1.5). Here the difference in the
levels of gross earnings stands out. In 2018, in the public sector, a woman with primary education (or a
diploma) earned 28 per cent (24 per cent) less than a man, while in the private sector a woman with the same
educational achievements earned 47 per cent less than her male colleague (46 per cent for graduates). These
gaps increased in the following years only in the public sector, as in the private sector the situation only altered
in the year of the pandemic and then returned to almost the initial level in 2022. Among those with an
14
educational qualification higher than ISCED 3, despite the fact that the gap between genders and sectors is still
considerable, a slight narrowing of the gender gaps is observed in 2022 compared to 2018 in both sectors.
Things are very different among those who have at least a university degree. The gap in annual earnings
between women and men with a degree in the public sector is 40 per cent in 2018 and 2020 but drops to 34
per cent in 2022. In the private sector, on the other hand, it reaches 70 per cent in 2015 and narrows to 61 per
cent in 2022. In the public sector the gender gap in gross earnings narrows among those above ISCED 6
(around 31 per cent in 2018 and 26 per cent in 2022). In industry and services, instead, having a doctorate or
a master's degree means for women earning 44 per cent less than men in 2022, a figure lower than that in 2018
but still quite impressive.
A final look at household disposable equivalent incomes reveals that the households with only public
employees or with at least one civil servant plus at least one private employee are best off since they have a
higher probability to belong to the upper quintiles. On the contrary, households whose members are private
employees lay more probably in the third quintile, and if members are employed in agriculture or as domestic
workers, their households finish more probably in the lower quintiles: this happens either if there are no
members in the household working in other sectors and if there is at least one private employee.
Households with two members are more frequently placed in the highest quintile, presumably because there
are two incomes (e.g. both are labour incomes or one is labour income and the other one comes from a pension).
Households with three or more members, instead, are definitely in the lowest quantiles, probably because some
of the members are too young to work or because there are unemployed components.
Chart 1.4. Per capita gross earnings by sector and age. Years 2015, 2020 and 2022 (Values at constant prices
2015)
0
5000
10000
15000
20000
25000
30000
35000
40000
16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64
G
ro
ss
e
ar
n
in
g
s
(a
t c
on
st
an
t 2
01
5
pr
ic
es
)
Age
Public vs. Private Industry and Services
public 2015
public 2020
public 2022
private 2015
private 2020
private 2022
0
2000
4000
6000
8000
10000
12000
16 19 22 25 28 31 34 37 40 43 46 49 52 55 58 61 64
G
ro
ss
e
ar
n
in
g
s
(a
t c
on
st
an
t 2
01
5
pr
ic
es
)
Age
Agricolture vs. Domestic
agricolture 2015
agricolture 2020
agricolture 2022
domestic 2015
domestic 2020
domestic 2022
15
Chart 1.5. Per capita annual gross earnings by sector and gender. Year 2022 (Values at constant prices 2015)
Table 1.4
Table 1.5
0
5.000
10.000
15.000
20.000
25.000
30.000
35.000
40.000
45.000
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64
G
ro
ss
e
ar
n
in
g
s
(a
t c
on
st
an
t 2
01
5
pr
ic
es
)
Age
Public sector
Male
Female
0
5.000
10.000
15.000
20.000
25.000
30.000
35.000
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64
G
ro
ss
e
ar
n
in
g
s
(a
t c
on
st
an
t 2
01
5
pr
ic
es
)
Age
Private Industry and Services
Male
Female
0
2.000
4.000
6.000
8.000
10.000
12.000
14.000
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64
G
ro
ss
e
ar
n
in
g
s
(a
t c
on
st
an
t 2
01
5
pr
ic
es
)
Age
Private Agricolture
Male
Female
0
2.000
4.000
6.000
8.000
10.000
12.000
16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32 34 36 38 40 42 44 46 48 50 52 54 56 58 60 62 64
G
ro
ss
e
ar
n
in
g
s
(a
t c
on
st
an
t 2
01
5
pr
ic
es
)
Age
Domestic
Male
Female
Females Males Females Males Females Males
Up to Lower secondary education (ISCED 0-2) 13.990 20.664 12.950 19.350 12.913 19.294
Upper secondary education (ISCED 3) 18.809 26.260 17.544 24.697 17.144 24.075
Up to short-cycle tertiary education (ISCED 4-5) 20.169 27.606 19.810 27.268 19.832 26.458
Bachelor’s or equivalent level (ISCED 6) 28.652 44.308 28.381 43.517 27.150 40.492
Up to PhD or their equivalent level (ISCED 7-8) 32.545 45.143 34.724 47.100 34.263 45.280
Total 19.674 26.583 18.960 25.493 18.704 24.911
Sources: Istat, Income Register 2015-2022, Population Register 2015-2022
Notes: (a) Only indiv iduals w ith annual gross earnings (at constant prices) >1000 Euros; (b) ISCED classification groupings: respectly 0-1-2, 3, 4-5, 6, 7-8
Per capita gross earnings (a), by year, gender and education(b). Years 2018,2020,2022 (values at constant 2015
prices)
Education level
2018 2020 2022
2018 2020 2022 2018 2020 2022
Up to Lower secondary education (ISCED 0-2) 128 130 131 147 151 148
Upper secondary education (ISCED 3) 124 128 128 146 148 145
Up to short-cycle tertiary education (ISCED 4-5) 128 129 126 145 149 143
Bachelor’s or equivalent level (ISCED 6) 140 140 134 170 169 161
Up to PhD or their equivalent level (ISCED 7-8) 131 130 126 152 147 144
Total 126 128 126 143 144 141
Sources: Istat, Income Register 2015-2022, Population Register 2015-2022
Education level
Public sector Private (industry and services)
Notes: (a) Only indiv iduals w ith annual gross earnings (at constant prices) >1000 Euros; (b) ISCED classification groupings: respectly 0-1-2, 3, 4-5, 6, 7-8
Gender-gap in per capita gross earnigs (a), by education level (b) and economic sector. Years 2018, 2020, 2022
(Index. Base: Females=100)
16
Table 1.6
Part 2. Employees with low earnings in industry and services between 2015 and
2022
2.1 Gross earnings and their components
The characterizing elements of per capita YGE have recently been analyzed by separating three elementary
components: hourly wages, monthly intensities and duration of employment (Istat, 2022). The general
conclusion was that wage inequalities derive from the interaction of hourly wages and working time, and that
referring solely to the level of hourly wages – as it often happens in the national public and policy debate - is
largely insufficient and cannot ensure comprehensive explanations neither of wage variability nor of the large
extent of low wage areas. In this section we extend the analysis to the eight-year period 2015-2022 by adopting
a similar theoretical approach.
In particular, we focus on gross earnings as defined in labour contracts, where they are intended as theoretical
gross earnings, in the sense that they represent the gross earnings the employee would have “theoretically”
received in the absence of events that may give rise to notional crediting or to occasional increase or decrease
in monthly pay. Production bonuses are thus excluded, as also the amounts due for untaken vacations or
vacations themselves, arrears due by law or by contracts related to previous years, and pay items related to
actual work performance (e.g., overtime). Instead, all recurring competencies normally found in monthly pay
(shift allowances, contracted overtime, and values subject to ordinary contributions referring to recurring
fringe benefits) are included. In this sense, earnings are gross of both income taxation and employee social
contributions. If actual gross earnings had been chosen for the analysis, they would have been affected by the
occurrence of such events especially in annual or monthly totals. Our objective here is focusing on a more
stable concept of earnings and that’s why in the rest of the paper we shall use the term gross earnings while
referring to theoretical earnings.
Households I quintile II quintile III quintile IV quintile V quintile
Sector of employement of
households components
Only private (I&S) sector 106 105 103 96 90
Only public sector 35 75 97 133 161
Only agricolture 271 128 61 28 11
Only domestic workers 287 141 50 14 8
Public and private (I&S) sectors 20 56 109 148 168
Private (I&S) and agricolture sectors 151 149 104 67 30
Private (I&S) and domestic sectors 167 170 101 48 14
Other combinations 124 127 109 85 55
N. of components
One 97 85 111 114 93
Two 77 91 91 104 136
Three 89 100 98 105 108
More than three 130 119 100 80 71
Citizenship of components
Only Italian 83 93 103 109 112
Mixed 164 140 92 59 44
Only foreign 238 152 72 27 10
N. of components below 14 yrs.
None 88 91 101 107 112
One 125 121 98 85 71
More than one 144 134 94 72 57
Sources: Istat, Income Register 2015-2022, Population Register 2015-2022
Households with at least one employee, by quintile of disposable equivalent income. Year 2021 (Specialization
rates)
17
The case of job retention schemes is paradigmatic. During pandemics, the use of job retention schemes was
extended to about one half of Italian employees in industry and services21. Employers were allowed to stop
paying for their employees, while the Government subsidized, through social transfers, the income of those
individuals and above all their employers. In the analyses made in Part 1 of this work this effect emerged
clearly since the object of the analyses was the actual monetary flows from employers to employees. In the
analyses of Part 2 and 3, instead, the effect will not be visible, since low earnings dynamics are studied
independently from this kind of events: during labour retention schemes, formal labour contracts remained
unchanged. The use of theoretical gross earnings, as we adoptin this contexts, is thus intended to target the
structural components of remunerations.
At the individual level, YGE is split by simple algebra as the product of three components. Hourly gross
earnings (HGE) are derived as the ratio between annual amount of contractual gross earnings and total
workable hours (WH):
𝐻𝐺𝐸 =
∑𝑌𝐺𝐸
∑𝑊𝐻
Monthly intensity (MOI) is computed as the ratio between workable hours and the number of months in the
year in which the employee had a labour contract (NM) of whatever length:
𝑀𝑂𝐼 =
∑𝑊𝐻
∑𝑁𝑀
The duration (DUR) is the average number of months covered in the year, at least partially, by a labour contract
and the average is calculated with respect to the N employees belonging to the domain under scrutiny:
𝐷𝑈𝑅 =
∑𝑁𝑀
𝑁
Using this little formalization, YGE is given by the product of these three components:
𝑌𝐺𝐸 = 𝐻𝐺𝐸 ∗ 𝑀𝑂𝐼 ∗ 𝐷𝑈𝑅
The analysis of YGE and its components is here extended to the period 2015-2022 by taking advantage of the
progressive availability of Istat statistical register and of the opportunities opened up by their integrated use,
such as analyzing yearly data on earnings longitudinally and comparing trends in the observed period in order
to study the evolution of their wages and the transitions to and from low-wage areas.
To summarize some results, we found that over the period examined, YGE declined in real terms: while in
2022 this can be explained by the growth in the inflation rate, more generally YGE were hit by the increased
adoption of labour contracts of lower quality, namely short-term and part-time jobs. A substantial, and rather
stable over time, share of employees dropped in the low-wage areas, especially low YGE areas, due essentially
to the low-intensity of employment relationships which has affected their income conditions with important
consequences even at the household level. Over the entire period, about 60 per cent of the employees
experienced at least one year under the thresholds of low pay. In particular, only a minor portion of these
employees succeeded to bring their pay back to the above thresholds22 (usually through better quality
contractual conditions), whilst a larger share either exited the status of employment (probably not voluntarily)
or never managed to permanently get rid of the “low pay trap".
21 De Gregorio et al. 2021.
22 As it will be cleared further on, two thresholds have been estimate, one on YGE and one on HGE. The first one is fixed
at 60% of the corresponding overall median, the second at 66% of the median calculated on standard jobs.
18
2.1. The evolution of annual gross earnings
Between 2015 and 2022, the number of employees in business and services rose by about two million (Table
2.1)23. This significant growth (+16%) has affected not so much the average age of employees (shallowly
increased from 39.5 to 40.3 years) as their whole age structure. In particular, we notice a sort of polarization.
On the one side, the increase in the weight of the younger age groups due to the flows of new entrants (despite
the stop in the year of the pandemic) and, on the other side, the increase in the older groups (due to the annual
drift of age cohorts) resulting in a partial retreat in the relative weight of the middle age classes. The weight of
foreign citizens grew by about one percentage point - albeit limited to the contribution of African and Asian
individuals – as well as the educational level of employees due to the slow extinction of people with lower
ISCED scores.
Over the same period, YGEs lost 8.4 percent of their value in real terms, ranking below the level attained in
2015. This result was largely determined by the dynamics of consumer prices, particularly in 2022, but it can
be also linked to the decline in YGE already manifested in the previous years when inflation was decidedly
modest (Table 2.2). A significant exception is 2020. The extensive use of job retention schemes - with almost
half of the employees involved - supported employment relationships mainly among holders of standard jobs
(i.e. full-time open-ended contracts). Consequently, the growth in per capita YGE (+2.2 percent compared to
2019) derives from the decrease of employees with non-standard contracts (whose earnings are generally
lower).
Net of the pandemic year, the negative dynamics of YGE derives from the combination of the reduction in real
HGE and the decline in the intensity and duration of jobs that took place until 2018 and after 2020. Considered
by gender, this dynamic does not reveal any specific trend: the structural evidence that shows a 30% higher
YGE for men remains constant in the period, and depends only for a lesser part by differences in HGE, whilst
much more important is the role played by the monthly intensity of labor relations. The latter evidence can be
explained, in turn, by the extensive use of female workforce with part-time contracts.
Changes in the composition of employees by type of contract also seem to have played a decisive role in
determining the decline in per capita wages (Table 2.3). Although open-ended contracts (full-time or part-
time) reveal a substantial stability in YGE, since 2017 their weight has gradually and significantly decreased,
net of the rebound observed in 2020. In 2022 the incidence of standard jobs as compared to 2015 lost about 4
percentage points in terms of employees, whilst the incidence of part-time positions, also on an open-ended
basis, decreased by about 2.5 percentage points. The increase in the number and relative weight of fixed-term
employees has proceeded hand in hand with the simultaneous reduction in hourly wages since the early years
of the observed period, and in the intensity of jobs.
23 As in the rest of Part 2 and 3 of this paper, the figure refers to employees between the ages of 15 and 64 who are part
of the resident household population as of December 31 of the reference year, net of entrepreneurs and old-age pension
holders: entrepreneurs often result as employees of the same enterprise that they own, so we excluded them from the
analysis. Specifically we included all individuals with at least one earning event from employment relationships with non-
agricultural private sector enterprises.
19
Table 2.1
Table 2.2
Demographic
characters 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Total 13.026 13.279 13.814 14.144 14.339 14.107 14.530 15.059
GENDER
Females 41,1 41,2 41,6 41,7 41,8 41,2 41,3 41,6
Males 58,9 58,8 58,4 58,3 58,2 58,8 58,7 58,4
AGE CLASS
15-24 8,1 8,3 9,3 9,6 9,9 9,1 10,0 10,6
25-34 23,9 23,5 23,3 23,1 22,8 22,6 22,5 22,3
35-44 29,9 28,9 27,7 26,7 25,8 25,3 24,3 23,4
45-54 26,9 27,2 27,2 27,3 27,4 28,0 27,6 27,0
55-64 11,2 12,1 12,6 13,3 14,1 15,0 15,5 16,7
CITIZENSHIP (by area)
Italian 90,3 90,4 90,3 90,0 89,8 89,4 89,5 89,4
EU 3,0 3,0 3,0 3,0 2,9 3,0 2,9 2,8
Europe non EU 2,1 2,1 2,1 2,1 2,1 2,0 2,0 2,0
Africa 1,8 1,8 1,8 1,9 2,0 2,2 2,3 2,4
Asia 2,1 2,1 2,2 2,3 2,4 2,6 2,5 2,5
Other areas 0,7 0,7 0,7 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,9
EDUCATION LEVEL
ISCED 0-2 31,2 32,8 32,1 30,5 29,6
ISCED 3 51,0 50,3 50,8 51,1 51,4
ISCED 4-5 5,6 5,3 5,7 6,0 6,4
ISCED 6 11,9 11,2 11,1 12,0 12,2
ISCED 7-8 0,4 0,4 0,4 0,4 0,4
Employees, by year and main demographic characters. Years 2015-2022 (Number in thosusands. %
distributions)
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises, belonging to the resident population, liv ing in households, ex cluding
entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement. Data on education lev el are av ailable from the population register only from 2018.
Years HGE (c)
Monthly
intensity (d)
Duration
(e) HGE (c)
Monthly
intensity (d)
Duration
(e) HGE (c)
Monthly
intensity (d)
Duration
(e)
2015 13.026 20.376 13,4 150 10,1 41,1 16.757 12,3 136 10,0 22.903 14,0 160 10,2
2016 13.279 20.721 13,4 150 10,3 41,2 17.099 12,4 135 10,2 23.264 14,0 159 10,4
2017 13.814 20.039 13,2 148 10,2 41,6 16.507 12,3 134 10,1 22.552 13,8 158 10,4
2018 14.144 19.865 13,1 148 10,3 41,7 16.389 12,2 134 10,1 22.348 13,6 158 10,4
2019 14.339 19.925 13,1 148 10,3 41,8 16.435 12,2 134 10,1 22.426 13,6 158 10,4
2020 14.107 20.369 13,2 149 10,3 41,2 16.907 12,4 135 10,1 22.799 13,7 159 10,5
2021 14.530 20.056 13,0 150 10,3 41,3 16.636 12,2 135 10,0 22.460 13,5 159 10,4
2022 15.059 18.657 12,2 149 10,3 41,6 15.423 11,4 135 10,0 20.958 12,6 159 10,4
Rates of change (f)
2016 -0,3 0,5 -2,6 1,8 -0,6 0,9 -3,1 1,7 -0,1 0,3 -2,3 1,9
2017 -3,1 -1,4 -1,0 -0,8 -3,6 -1,1 -1,5 -1,1 -2,8 -1,6 -0,6 -0,6
2018 -1,0 -1,1 0,0 0,0 -0,8 -0,6 0,0 -0,1 -1,1 -1,3 0,1 0,2
2019 0,3 0,2 0,0 0,1 0,3 0,3 0,1 -0,1 0,3 0,1 0,0 0,2
2020 3,6 0,7 2,3 0,5 7,1 1,2 5,1 0,6 1,6 0,5 0,6 0,5
2021 -2,7 -1,2 -1,3 -0,3 -5,3 -1,1 -3,6 -0,7 -1,3 -1,4 0,1 -0,1
2022 -6,9 -6,8 0,0 -0,2 -7,2 -6,9 0,1 -0,3 -6,7 -6,6 0,0 -0,1
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises, belonging to the resident population, liv ing in households, ex cluding entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement.(b) Av erage YGE. (c) YGE by
w orkable hour. (d) Workable hours in each month under contract. (e) Number of months w ith a contract. (f) w ith respect to the preceding y ear.
YGE (b)
Components
TOTAL WOMEN MEN
YGE of employees, by year, gender and YGE component. Years 2015-2022 (Values at constant 2015 prices)
Employees
(a)
YGE (b)
Women %
on total (a)
YGE (b) YGE (b)
YGE (b)
Components
YGE (b)
Components
20
Table 2.3
2.3. The employees with low earnings
Following an analysis tool currently used in the literature, two thresholds are introduced to identify employees
with low earnings: one on YGE and the other on HGE (Table 2.4). The first threshold is fixed at 60 percent of
median YGE, where the median is calculated on all employees belonging to the resident population. The
second threshold identifies employees whose hourly wage is less than two-thirds of HGE median, the latter
calculated only on standard labor relations excluding apprentices. At constant prices, the value of the two
thresholds decreases from 2020, while at current prices they maintain a slightly increasing trend: in 2022 the
threshold for YGE is at current prices slightly above 12 thousand euros, while HGE threshold is about 8.5
euros per hour24.
By 2022, the share of employees were the YGE threshold25 is just under 30 percent. Such proportion is quite
constant over the years but shows a slight decline from 2019 onwards. The number of individuals below the
threshold (which at the end of the period numbered 4.4 million, i.e. over 400,000 more than in 2015) follows
the increase in the total number of employees (Table 2.5). People with non-standard contracts, as expected, are
found more frequently in the low YGE area. It’s the case of about a half of part-time open-ended employees
whose incidence in the below-the-threshold group has fallen steadily since 2015. However, the most critical
situations are among employees with fixed-term jobs, especially those with part-time contracts. For these
categories, the duration and intensity of labour contract affect heavily the overall compensation.
Employees with low HGE are 1.4 million in 2022 (9.3 percent of the total), down from about 1.7 million
recorded in 2018. Again, short-term jobs are undoubtedly the most vulnerable, especially if they are also part-
time contracts.
Employees with standard jobs, although relatively less affected by low pay, significantly fuel the area of critical
pay: in 2022 about 400,000 low-YGE and 300,000 low-HGE employees came from standard job. At the
opposite end, about 3 million low-YGE workers held part-time jobs (Table 2.6). Young people, women and
foreign citizens were the most frequent figures in non-standard jobs and also those most associated with low
earnings. In particular, two out of three young people are below YGE threshold, and those with low HGE
24 The two thresholds are calculated on the same reference population, excluding entrepreneurs and retired people.
25 From now on we shall refer to low YGE or low HGE to intend employees below the corresponding threshold.
2015 2022 YGE HGE (c)
Monthly
intensity (d) Duration (e) YGE HGE (c)
Monthly
intensity (d) Duration (e)
Only standard (g) 55,4 51,5 26.483 13,5 171 11,5 -0,7 -1,1 0,1 0,3
Only full-time short-term
(h)
8,1 9,9 8.995 9,5 147 6,4 -1,3 -1,6 -0,3 0,6
Only part-time open-
ended (i)
19,4 16,9 11.468 9,9 106 11,0 0,3 -1,2 0,5 1,0
Only part-time short-term
(l)
5,1 7,6 3.954 8,4 83 5,6 -0,7 -1,5 -0,1 0,9
Mixed types, also
standard (m)
7,7 7,9 17.025 9,8 159 10,9 -0,5 -1,4 0,2 0,7
Other mixed types (n) 4,2 6,2 8.666 8,5 109 9,3 -0,3 -1,4 0,6 0,5
Total 100 100 18.657 12,2 149 10,3 -1,3 -1,4 -0,1 0,2
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises, belonging to the resident population, liv ing in households, ex cluding entrepreneurs and those
w ho are in retirement. (b) Av erage YGE. (c) YGE by w orkable hour. (d) Workable hours in each month under contract. (e) Number of months w ith a contract. (f) w ith respect to the preceding
y ear. (g) Employ ees w ith only standard jobs in the y ear. (h) Employ ees w ith only full-time short-term jobs in the y ear. (i) Employ ees w ith only part-time open-ended jobs in the y ear. (l)
Employ ees w ith only part-time short-term jobs in the y ear. (m) Employ ees w ith more than one ty pe of job in the y ear, among w hich also standard jobs. (n) Employ ees w ith more than one
ty pe of job in the y ear, among w hich nev er standard jobs. (p) Employ ees are clasified on the basis of the ty pe of jobs they ex perience during the y ear, indipendently of the number of
employ ers.
YGE, by year, type of job and component. Years 2015-2022 (Distribution and average annual rate of change. Values at constant 2015
prices )
Type of job (p)
Employees %
(a)
Per capita yearly gross earnings YGE (b)
2022 Average rate of change 2015-2022
Components Components
21
account for between one-quarter and one-third of the target subpopulation. Among the population with at least
a bachelor's degree, the incidence of low-YGE appears to be about half of the total figure.
When family ties are taken into account, households with low-YGE employees verge on 4 million at the end
of the observed period: they steadily account for about 35 percent of total households with employees and have
slightly more members (3 individuals per household versus 2.6), a figure that is also quite stable over time
(Table 2.7). The presence of low-YGE employees significantly affects household incomes: any other labour
income of their own or other household members' is unlikely to provide adequate support to the family’s
economic wellbeing. In fact, if we consider the equivalent disposable incomes26, the presence of employees
with low YGE is associated with a higher probability of ending up in the poorest fifth, nearly twice as high as
for the rest of households with employees, with a significant presence even in the second fifth.
Table 2.4
26 For each household, the sum of the individual incomes has been divided by a family coefficient based on OECD-
modified equivalence scale in order to take into account the different compositions of families.
Current prices
Constant 2015
prices (b) Current prices
Constant 2015
prices (b)
2015 11.564 11.564 8,0 8,0
2016 11.738 11.750 8,0 8,1
2017 11.477 11.330 8,1 8,0
2018 11.497 11.217 8,2 8,0
2019 11.621 11.261 8,3 8,0
2020 11.964 11.616 8,3 8,0
2021 11.975 11.405 8,3 7,9
2022 12.056 10.557 8,5 7,4
Notes: (a) YGE threshold is 60% of the median v alue, ex cluding entrepreneurs and old-age pension holders. HGE
threshold is equal to 66 percent of the median v alue calculated on standard jobs only , ex cluding apprentices,
entrepreneurs and old-age pension holders. (b) Values at constant prices refer to 2015 and are calculated by
apply ing changes in the general HICP index .
Thersholds (a) adopted to identify the employees with low earnings, by year
and type of threshold (values at current anc constant 2015 prices)
Year
YGE HGE
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps,
Uniemens 2015-2022.
22
Table 2.5
Table 2.6
Year
Total Only standard (c)
Only full-time
short-term (d)
Only part-time
open-ended (e)
Only part-time
short-term (f)
Mixed types, also
standard (g)
Other mixed
types (h)
LOW YGE
2015 3.947 30,3 8,1 65,5 56,2 93,9 22,9 72,8
2016 3.912 29,5 5,8 63,9 54,0 93,9 23,4 73,3
2017 4.170 30,2 5,2 60,4 49,7 92,5 22,1 71,4
2018 4.260 30,1 5,0 58,2 48,0 91,7 18,9 69,5
2019 4.315 30,1 4,8 63,7 47,7 93,8 17,5 69,7
2020 4.213 29,9 4,0 68,9 49,4 94,5 18,5 73,2
2021 4.317 29,7 4,3 66,8 47,6 94,2 17,2 70,7
2022 4.413 29,3 5,1 63,4 47,0 93,8 15,2 66,9
LOW HGE
2015 1.222 9,4 4,6 17,9 12,8 22,5 11,5 20,6
2016 1.273 9,6 4,5 17,8 13,0 23,2 12,3 21,3
2017 1.564 11,3 4,8 20,3 14,3 26,2 14,1 24,5
2018 1.688 11,9 4,8 20,7 14,8 27,0 14,1 25,3
2019 1.650 11,5 4,6 21,7 14,2 25,9 13,2 24,4
2020 1.539 10,9 4,5 20,8 14,3 25,1 13,0 23,2
2021 1.531 10,5 4,2 19,8 13,2 25,0 12,0 22,5
2022 1.400 9,3 3,7 18,0 11,4 21,9 10,0 19,8
Employees with low earnings, by year, type of threshold and type of job. Years 2015-2022 (Number in thousands. % Incidence)
Employees
below
thresh. (b)
Incidence % by type of job (a)
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note:(a) Employ ees are clasified on the basis of the ty pe of jobs they ex perience during the y ear, indipendently of the number of employ ers. (b) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith
priv ate non-agricolture enterprises, belonging to the resident population, liv ing in households, ex cluding entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement. (c) Employ ees w ith only standard jobs in the
y ear. (d) Employ ees w ith only full-time short-term jobs in the y ear. (e) Employ ees w ith only part-time open-ended jobs in the y ear. (f) Employ ees w ith only part-time short-term jobs in the y ear. (g)
Employ ees w ith more than one ty pe of job in the y ear, among w hich also standard jobs. (h) Employ ees w ith more than one ty pe of job in the y ear, among w hich nev er standard jobs.
Total 15-24 yrs 25-34 yrs Female Foreign. ISCED 0-2 ISCED 7-8
2015 3.947 30,3 67,4 37,3 39,0 47,0
2016 3.912 29,5 67,0 36,2 38,4 46,2
2017 4.170 30,2 69,0 36,6 39,0 46,1
2018 4.260 30,1 68,2 36,2 38,9 45,2 34,0 19,5
2019 4.315 30,1 68,1 35,8 39,1 44,6 34,2 18,1
2020 4.213 29,9 66,6 35,9 38,9 45,0 33,6 18,3
2021 4.317 29,7 68,5 34,8 39,0 43,4 33,4 18,3
2022 4.413 29,3 66,6 32,7 38,9 42,1 33,4 18,0
2015 1.222 9,4 28,2 11,9 11,7 18,4
2016 1.273 9,6 28,6 12,2 11,8 18,8
2017 1.564 11,3 31,8 14,1 13,8 21,2
2018 1.688 11,9 32,3 14,8 14,6 21,8 14,4 5,5
2019 1.650 11,5 31,6 14,1 14,2 20,4 13,9 4,9
2020 1.539 10,9 29,9 13,6 13,4 19,8 13,3 4,6
2021 1.531 10,5 28,5 12,8 13,1 18,3 12,8 4,4
2022 1.400 9,3 25,6 10,9 11,9 15,5 11,2 3,9
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises, belonging to the resident population, liv ing in households, ex cluding
entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement.
Employees with low earnings, by year, type of threshold and main demographic characters. Years 2015-2022
(Number in thousands. % Incidence)
Years
Employees
below the
thresh. (a)
Incidence %
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
LOW YGE
LOW HGE
23
Table 2.7
2.4. Employees with low earnings on a longitudinal perspective
In order to highlight some aspects of wage trends, the set of employees of private non-agricultural enterprises
between 2015 and 2022 was projected onto the resident population of 2022, restricting the analysis to
individuals who were between the ages of 25 and 60 in 2022 (and therefore 18-53 in 2015). This made it
possible, on the one hand, to look backward at the events and employment continuity of this sub-population
and, on the other hand, to examine the trajectories of entries and exits of the individuals from low-wage areas.
In 2022, those who had experience as employees between 2015 and 2022 totaled 16.5 million, or 58.5 percent
of the entire 25-60 population (Table 2.8)27. A large proportion of them (about 12.9 million) were still
employed in 2022, while the remaining 3.6 million who were without a contract in that year, were nonetheless
among employees in at least one of the previous years.
Among those who are in employment in 2022 there is a neat predominance of individuals with continuous
traces of employment in all years of the observed period (about 7.7 million28), while others – generally younger
people - show continuous traces of employment only from 2019 onward. These two cohorts together account
for 10 million individuals. A further set of about 1.4 million of individuals are new employees hired from
202029. The remaining lot consists of more than 1.2 million individuals with non-continuous job experience,
albeit in many cases repeated over several years. The last lot is composed by individuals no more in
employment in 2022: part of them since longer time (1.6 million had no signs since 2019), while an additional
2 million individuals gradually exited private employment between 2019 and 2022.
The cohort of persistent workers, in addition to being the largest, is also the cohort with the highest HGE and
YGE: their real YGE growth was slow but appreciable until the abrupt slowdown brought about by the surge
in inflation in 2022 (Table 2.9). Of course, this is a very heterogeneous cohort, as will be seen below.
Employees with more recent continuous job signals, although starting from very modest wage levels, show a
remarkable dynamics in YGE in the face of somewhat static HGE: these are individuals whose conditions have
improved through a greater intensity of labor relations and who have gone through the pandemic period
27 This subpopulation of employees accounts for about two-thirds of the male population and just over half of the female
population, more than 70 percent of the under-35s and just over 50 percent of the over-50s (the latter likely to be more
absorbed in public employment). Looking only at those employed in 2022, the incidence of younger people drops by
about 20 percentage points, confirming the greater intermittency of employment relationships during the observed period.
28 In the following, we will refer to these employees with pay signals in all years of the period by referring to them as
"persistent."
29 "New" in this case stands for "with no employment relationship from 2015 to 2019."
N (.000)
Incidence
% (c) Avg.
Incidence
% (e) First Second Third Fourth Fifth
2015 3.523 35,1 3,1 37,8 207 116 89 53 35
2016 3.491 34,2 3,1 37,0 207 118 88 53 34
2017 3.687 35,2 3,1 38,2 205 119 88 53 34
2018 3.766 35,2 3,1 38,3 205 119 87 54 35
2019 3.815 35,3 3,1 38,5 204 120 86 54 36
2020 3.748 34,9 3,0 37,7 199 122 87 56 35
2021 3.827 35,0 3,1 38,1 198 121 87 57 38
2022 (b) 3.939 35,0 3,0 38,2 188 122 88 58 40
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: (a) The specialization rate is obtained by the ratio betw een the share of households w ith at least an employ eee below YGE threshold and the share of househods in the quintile. A v alue ov er 100marks an
ov er the av erage frequency . (b) For the y ear 2022 calculations are made based on 2021 personal incomes. (c) % of households w ith at least one component w ith low YGE. (d) Av erage number of components
in the households w ith at least one employ ee w ith low YGE. (e) % of components in households w ith at least an employ ee w ith low YGE.
Households with at least one component with low YGE, by quintile of disposable equivalent household income and year. Years 2015-2022
(Specialization rates with respect to the households of employees (a))
Years
Households
Number
Number of
components (d) Quintile of disposable equivalent household income
24
practically unscathed, achieving greater stability precisely in those years. The rest of the cohorts show more
irregular wage dynamics, as they are essentially characterized by modest earnings, especially in YGE.
In contrast, about 10 million employees ended up, even episodically, below one of the two thresholds. This is
more than one-third of the entire 2022 population and more than 60 percent of the subpopulation of employees
(Table 2.10). Individual experiences of low HGE are usually associated with low YGE, although the reverse
is valid more rarely. Of the 9.8 million individuals with low YGE events (including 6.7 million below the
threshold for more than two years), only 3.7 million also experienced low HGE. For the others, the annual
wage shortfalls enlighten a problem of employment intensity and contract breaks. Symmetrically, however,
among the 4 million employees who experienced low HGE during the period, fewer than 10 percent exceeded
the low YGE threshold each year: in short, then, when hourly wages are very low, it is unlikely that annual
wages are not also low.
Employees with persistent signals between 2015 and 2022 are less frequently in the low-pay areas, although
nearly a third of them spent at least one year in the low YGE class. Far greater is the incidence of low-pay
episodes in the other cohorts of employees: more than 80 percent of employees have experienced periods of
low annual pay, even among those no longer employed in 2022, with peaks of more than 90 percent among
employees with the most discontinuous work trajectories. A large portion of them experienced low contract
duration and extremely limited work intensity. Furthermore, if only the threshold on HGE is considered, trends
by cohort reveal a further sign of weakness among employees with more discontinuous labour contracts.
In the cohorts characterized by persistent labour relations, on the other hand, the annual incidence of the
employees with low earnings halved over the period. This is because a substantial group of workers (about 1.8
million) raised permanently their YGE as of 2019, and just under 1.2 million individuals raised their HGE
above the threshold (Table 2.11). At the opposite end of the spectrum, the portion of employees who have
never left permanently their wage insecurity is certainly very large. A group of 4.1 million individuals, in fact,
has never risen above the YGE threshold: of these almost 900,000 come from the persistent cohorts and more
than three million from those who in 2022 were without a contract (even for a long time), denoting clear signs
of pay weakness even when they were previously active. Employees who did not succeed in the observed
period to get out of low HGE are proportionately a smaller group (but still 900,000): for them it seems that
improving HGE over the threshold is relatively easier than resolving with the YGE threshold. Finally, if we
consider all employees who are unable to permanently break out of poor pay levels or those who see their
situation worsening, we observe that even in the most persistent cohorts of workers, there is less than 40 percent
of individuals who manage to cross the threshold of low pay, whether hourly or annual.
The cohort of the most persistent employees is definitely the largest and most heterogeneous in both
composition and evolution of their earnings. It is overwhelmingly composed of adults, males, with fewer
foreigners (and also fewer university graduates, due to a predictably age-related effect). On the opposite side,
if we look at the portion of those who experienced periods of low pay between 2015 and 2022, the share of
women, young people, and foreigners is markedly higher, and the share of university graduates appears
conspicuously lower (Table 2.12).
After all, women, young people and foreigners are generally the most associated with low earnings, which
regarded nearly 70 percent of women and more than 80 percent of young people and foreigners with
employment signals during the period. The cohorts of employees without a contract in 2022, especially in the
segments with low earnings, result to be characterized by a high female composition signaling a specific
tendency to undergo even long-term contract interruptions. Employees with persistent relationships as of 2019
are on average younger, as well as the cohort with more recent access to employment positions; the latter in
particular also show a significant presence of foreigners and university graduates. Finally, the cohorts of
employees with intermittent jobs also have a strong youth component.
25
Table 2.8
Table 2.9
Employees by cohot of persistence and year in whiche they were employed. Years 2015-2022 (thousands)
Cohorts (a) Employees (i) 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
Employed in 2022 12.885 8.859 10.447 10.584 10.807 10.813 11.917 12.116 12.885
Persistent since 2015 (b) 7.715 7.715 7.715 7.715 7.715 7.715 7.715 7.715 7.715
Other persistent since 2019 (c) 2.558 458 1.717 1.849 2.067 2.558 2.558 2.558 2.558
Entry in 2020 (d) 1.367 786 838 1.367
Discontinuous with some seniority (e) 932 602 837 851 832 434 728 817 932
Other discontinuous (f) 314 84 178 169 193 106 130 188 314
Employees only before 2022 3.644 2.056 2.838 2.851 2.876 1.636 1.782 1.590 …
Only before 2019 (g) 1.612 1.080 1.287 1.257 1.222
Other exited between 2019 and 2022 (h) 2.032 977 1.551 1.595 1.654 1.636 1.782 1.590 …
Total 16.530 10.916 13.285 13.435 13.682 12.449 13.699 13.706 12.885
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises betw een 2015 and 2022, belonging to the resident population in 2022, liv ing in households,
ex cluding entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement and aged 25-60. Here they are classified on the basis of theri presence among employ ees; (b) Employ ees in ev ery y ear of the period;
(c) Others employ ees in ev ery y ear from 2019; (d) Other employ ees for the first time from 2020 on; (e) Employ ees present discontinuously in the period but at least for four y ears. (f) Other
discontinuous employ ees (g) Employ ees only until 2018, ev entually discontinuously ; (h) Other employ ees in 2019-2021, ev entually discontinuous; (i) Number of employ ees w ith earnings in at
least one month betw een 2015-2022.
Cohorts (a) 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022
YGE
Employed in 2022 20.974 21.413 21.083 21.216 21.505 21.926 21.787 19.777
Persistent since 2015 (b) 22.398 23.749 24.071 24.516 25.022 25.465 25.684 23.972
Other persistent since 2019 (c) 10.636 8.828 10.504 12.541 13.721 15.739 16.884 16.349
Entry in 2020 (d) 8.770 11.031 11.079
Discontinuous with some seniority (e) 12.413 12.402 11.290 10.086 9.191 7.975 10.627 11.146
Other discontinuous (f) 8.032 5.335 3.317 3.455 3.802 4.661 7.025 8.113
Employees only before 2022 13.484 13.641 12.627 11.954 11.409 10.841 7.713
Only before 2019 (g) 12.070 11.781 9.877 6.662
Other exited between 2019 and 2022 (h) 15.047 15.287 14.489 13.964 11.409 10.841 7.713
Total 19.563 20.042 19.661 19.804 20.178 20.833 20.916 19.777
HGE
Employed in 2022 13,1 13,2 13,1 13,0 13,1 13,3 13,2 12,3
Persistent since 2015 (b) 13,3 13,4 13,5 13,6 13,8 14,0 14,0 13,3
Other persistent since 2019 (c) 11,0 10,6 10,3 10,3 10,5 10,9 11,0 10,5
Entry in 2020 (d) 10,9 11,0 10,3
Discontinuous with some seniority (e) 11,1 11,0 10,8 10,5 10,6 10,6 10,7 10,0
Other discontinuous (f) 11,3 10,8 9,5 9,4 9,5 9,6 10,6 9,7
Employees only before 2022 11,9 11,9 11,7 11,5 11,5 11,7 11,1
Only before 2019 (g) 11,8 11,8 11,6 11,1
Other exited between 2019 and 2022 (h) 11,9 11,9 11,7 11,5 11,5 11,7 11,1
Total 12,9 13,0 12,9 12,8 13,0 13,2 13,1 12,3
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Gross earnings, by cohort and year. Years 2015-2022 (values at constant 2015 prices)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises betw een 2015 and 2022, belonging to the resident population in 2022, liv ing in
households, ex cluding entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement and aged 25-60. Here they are classified on the basis of theri presence among employ ees; (b)
Employ ees in ev ery y ear of the period; (c) Others employ ees in ev ery y ear from 2019; (d) Other employ ees for the first time from 2020 on; (e) Employ ees present
discontinuously in the period but at least for four y ears. (f) Other discontinuous employ ees (g) Employ ees only until 2018, ev entually discontinuously ; (h) Other employ ees in
2019-2021, ev entually discontinuous; (i) Number of employ ees w ith earnings in at least one month betw een 2015-2022.
26
Table 2.10
Table 2.11
Table 2.12
Cohorts (a) N
Incid.
% N Incid.% N
Incid.
% N
Incid.
%
Employed in 2022 12.885 6.935 53,8 6.656 51,7 2.953 22,9 2.674 20,7
Persistent since 2015 (b) 7.715 2.501 32,4 2.283 29,6 1.049 13,6 830 10,8
Other persistent since 2019 (c) 2.558 2.160 84,4 2.121 82,9 998 39,0 959 37,5
Entry in 2020 (d) 1.367 1.086 79,5 1.069 78,2 327 24,0 310 22,7
Discontinuous with some seniority (e) 932 882 94,6 878 94,2 437 46,9 433 46,5
Other discontinuous (f) 314 306 97,5 306 97,3 141 45,0 141 44,8
Employees only before 2022 3.644 3.124 85,7 3.099 85,0 1.099 30,2 1.074 29,5
Only before 2019 (g) 1.612 1.367 84,8 1.356 84,1 409 25,3 397 24,6
Other exited between 2019 and 2022 (h)2.032 1.756 86,4 1.743 85,8 690 34,0 677 33,3
Total 16.530 10.059 60,9 9.755 59,0 4.052 24,5 3.747 22,7
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals with at least an earning event with private non-agricolture enterprises between 2015 and 2022, belonging to the resident population in
2022, liv ing in households, excluding entrepreneurs and those who are in retirement and aged 25-60. Here they are classified on the basis of theri presence
among employees; (b) Employees in every year of the period; (c) Others employees in every year from 2019; (d) Other employees for the first time from 2020
on; (e) Employees present discontinuously in the period but at least for four years. (f) Other discontinuous employees (g) Employees only until 2018, eventually
discontinuously ; (h) Other employees in 2019-2021, eventually discontinuous; (i) Number of employees with earnings in at least one month between 2015-2022.
Employees with low earnings, by cohort and type oft hreshold. Years 2015-2022 (Numbers in thousands)
Employees
(i)
of whom: with low earnings
YGE or HGE YGE HGE YGE and HGE
Cohorts (a)
Employees
(i) Always
No more
since 2019 From 2019
Other
intermittents
Employees
(i) Always
No more
since 2019 From 2019
Other
intermittents
Employed in 2022 6.656 2.088 1.663 1.106 1.799 2.953 423 968 822 739
Persistent since 2015 (b) 2.283 389 878 336 681 1.049 90 469 177 312
Other persistent since 2019 (c) 2.121 472 670 293 685 998 97 300 305 296
Entry in 2020 (d) 1.069 751 318 327 195 133
Discontinuous with some seniority (e) 878 277 83 121 397 437 22 153 142 120
Other discontinuous (f) 306 200 31 39 36 141 19 46 66 11
Employees only before 2022 3.099 2.058 118 253 670 1.099 470 201 155 274
Only before 2019 (g) 1.356 1.033 323 409 255 153
Other exited between 2019 and 2022 (h) 1.743 1.025 118 253 347 690 214 201 155 121
Total 9.755 4.146 1.781 1.359 2.468 4.052 893 1.169 977 1.013
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises betw een 2015 and 2022, belonging to the resident population in 2022, liv ing in households, ex cluding
entrepreneurs and those w ho are in retirement and aged 25-60. Here they are classified on the basis of theri presence among employ ees; (b) Employ ees in ev ery y ear of the period; (c) Others
employ ees in ev ery y ear from 2019; (d) Other employ ees for the first time from 2020 on; (e) Employ ees present discontinuously in the period but at least for four y ears. (f) Other discontinuous
employ ees (g) Employ ees only until 2018, ev entually discontinuously ; (h) Other employ ees in 2019-2021, ev entually discontinuous; (i) Number of employ ees w ith earnings in at least one month
betw een 2015-2022.
Employees with low earnings, by cohort and type of threshold. Years 2015-2022 (thousands)
YGE HGE
When below the threshold When below the threshold
Cohorts (a)
25-34
yrs. Female Foreign.
ISCED
6-7-8
25-34
yrs. Female Foreign.
ISCED
6-7-8 Total 25-34 yrs. Female Foreign.
ISCED
6-7-8
Employed in 2022 12.885 26,1 41,9 10,8 14,2 6.935 38,5 48,2 15,5 11,9 53,8 79,4 61,8 77,1 45,1
Persistent since 2015 (b) 7.715 13,5 39,5 6,1 12,8 2.501 26,3 49,0 11,1 8,6 32,4 63,2 40,2 59,3 21,8
Other persistent since 2019 (c) 2.558 47,1 43,1 15,4 15,9 2.160 48,4 45,3 15,8 13,3 84,4 86,9 88,6 86,8 70,2
Entry in 2020 (d) 1.367 46,4 48,6 25,7 20,5 1.086 45,2 52,4 25,9 17,2 79,5 77,4 85,7 79,9 66,7
Discontinuous with some seniority (e) 932 36,3 46,2 13,8 11,0 882 37,7 47,2 14,0 10,4 94,6 98,2 96,6 96,3 89,9
Other discontinuous (f) 314 45,3 49,0 16,0 14,5 306 45,9 49,5 16,1 14,2 97,5 98,8 98,6 98,0 95,2
Employees only before 2022 3.644 29,4 53,8 12,4 15,9 3.124 32,3 56,2 13,4 15,2 85,7 94,1 89,4 92,6 82,2
Only before 2019 (g) 1.612 25,2 55,0 10,8 16,9 1.367 27,7 57,5 11,7 16,0 84,8 93,3 88,7 91,8 80,6
Other exited between 2019 and 2022 (h)2.032 32,7 52,9 13,6 15,0 1.756 35,9 55,2 14,7 14,6 86,4 94,7 90,0 93,1 83,6
Total 16.530 26,8 44,5 11,2 14,5 10.059 36,6 50,6 14,8 12,9 60,9 83,0 69,2 80,9 54,1
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals w ith at least an earning ev ent w ith priv ate non-agricolture enterprises betw een 2015 and 2022, belonging to the resident population in 2022, liv ing in households, ex cluding entrepreneurs and those w ho
are in retirement and aged 25-60. Here they are classified on the basis of theri presence among employ ees; (b) Employ ees in ev ery y ear of the period; (c) Others employ ees in ev ery y ear from 2019; (d) Other employ ees for
the first time from 2020 on; (e) Employ ees present discontinuously in the period but at least for four y ears. (f) Other discontinuous employ ees (g) Employ ees only until 2018, ev entually discontinuously ; (h) Other employ ees in
2019-2021, ev entually discontinuous; (i) Number of employ ees w ith earnings in at least one month betw een 2015-2022.
Employees, by cohort, demographic characters and low earnings conditions. Years 2015-2022 (Numbers in thousand; %)
Employees of whom: at least one year with low YGE or HGE
Total
Composition % Incidence % on the respective total
Total (i)
Composizione %
27
2.4. Employees who escaped the low-wage trap
It is interesting to observe the trajectories of the employees who succeeded to exit from low-earnings or,
conversely, who never managed to fully exit the low-earnings trap: in order to do that, we focus on the largest
cohort of 7 million persistent employees, with signs of dependent employment in every year of the period
2015-2022.
A significant portion of these workers (about 878 thousands) experienced low YGE in the first part of the
period but succeeded to emancipate permanently in the second time span. It is interesting to shed some light
on the main reasons why this happened, whether it was because of an increase in HGE or in working time, if
there was any improvement in job quality, what happened during the pandemic and whether gross earnings
resisted or not to inflationary pressures.
For these individuals, the development of YGE was intense until 2021 but slowed in 2022 when inflation
pressures hit severely (Table 2.13). Ultimately, the exit from low YGE was supported not so much by the
dynamics of HGE (which increased appreciably in real terms up to 2021) but rather by the increase in working
time. In particular, up to 2019 the growth in YGE stemmed mostly from the increase in the duration of contracts
due to the transitions to open-ended jobs, but also from the growth in monthly intensity due to transitions to
full-time jobs. After 2020, however, margins for intensity growth saturated and the dynamics of HGE were
not sufficient to support YGE, especially in 2022.
The employees who gradually left behind a low-HGE status (about 470 thousands) showed similar growth in
YGE (until 2020) but at significantly lower absolute levels. Their HGE, although it rose appreciably over the
period, was never permanently above the average of 10 euros per hour. Until 2017, moreover, its contribution
to the change in YGE was lower than the contribution of the duration of contracts. The gradual weakening of
these components led to a stagnation of wages that worsened in 2022 due to the inflation boost. The recovery
due to the increase in HGE only partially offset the low YGE, which remained dependent on the intensity and
duration of jobs.
Such dynamics are linked to important changes in the job quality: a significant proportion of employees who
passed over the low-YGE line have gradually gained access to standard jobs, the incidence of which raised in
the period from just over a quarter to almost two-thirds (Table 2.14). At the same time, short-term jobs (be
them full-time or part-time) decreased whilst open-ended part-time decreased much less, confirming the
presence of more stable relationships. The exit from low-HGE status came along with transitions to standard
jobs and at the expense of fixed-term contracts, although to a lesser extent. More often improvements were
achieved within the pre-existing contract.
As for the flows characterized by changes in the type of labour contract between 2015 and 2019, the exit from
the low YGE observed for almost half of the workers went along with an improvement in the job quality
because of the transit to standard or open-ended jobs (Table 2.15). The growth in YGE in this case exceeds
double digits due to the decisive contribution of the intensity and duration of employment, especially for those
who transited to full-time contracts. Part of the employees with standard jobs in 2015, gained the pay increase
through the consolidation of duration and, to a lesser extent, through the increase in HGE. For those individuals
(mostly women) who maintained open-ended part-time jobs during this period, YGE increased because of the
increase in contractual workable hours which also resulted in an intensification of monthly working
commitments. Finally, there is a share of employees (more than 10 percent) who came out of low pay even
with worsening contractual conditions, and this was due to increases in contract length or work intensity
although the quite modest, if not negative, contribution of HGE.
In the last three-year period, the improvements in the quality of labour contracts were less intense (Table 2.16).
About 60 percent of employees retained the contractual condition of 2019, albeit with stagnant YGE in real
terms. However, while full-time employees showed a relative growth in HGE, part-time workers could not
keep the pace of inflation: despite the increase in monthly intensity, there was a decrease in YGE. For who
gained access to standard jobs after 2019, coming largely from part-time contracts, the large increase in YGE
28
was determined by monthly intensity and resisted the inflationary blaze of 2022, whilst the contribution of
HGE was insignificant
The scenario partly changes if we consider the exits from low HGE: here the transition is not so tied to the
improvement in job quality that in many cases even worsened (Table 2.17). The YGE of these individuals
(shortly below 16 thousand euros in 2019) saw a double-digit growth rate. It was higher for those whose
contractual conditions improved over the period and for those who remained with full-time and fixed-term
jobs. In addition to the generalized increase in HGE (similar for all categories regardless of contractual
changes) - those who improved the quality of their jobs experienced a faster growth in the monthly intensity
and those whose job quality remained unchanged saw an increase in the job duration
In the last four-year period 2019-2022, the exits from low HGE were associated with a stagnation in YGE
(Table 2.18). Even so, only for the employees who could improve the quality of their jobs through access to
open-ended jobs (standard or part-time) this growth is the result of increased monthly intensity and contract
length. For other transitions to full-time, the increase is given by workable hours. Overall, YGE and HGE in
2022 are still quite modest, placing just above 16 thousand euros and on 9.6 euros, respectively.
Table 2.13
Table 2.14
Years Employees YGE HGE
Monthly
intensity Duration YGE HGE
Monthly
intensity Duration
YGE
2015 878 8.818 9,8 123 7,4
2016 878 13.629 10,0 136 10,0 54,6 2,6 11,0 35,7
2017 878 15.317 10,1 143 10,6 12,4 0,8 5,0 6,2
2018 878 17.212 10,3 151 11,1 12,4 1,7 5,3 5,0
2019 878 19.604 10,6 157 11,8 13,9 3,1 4,3 6,0
2020 878 20.605 10,9 160 11,9 5,1 2,8 1,7 0,6
2021 878 21.007 11,0 161 11,9 2,0 1,2 0,4 0,4
2022 878 20.028 10,5 161 11,9 -4,7 -4,3 0,1 -0,4
HGE
2015 469 9.730 7,9 143 8,6
2016 469 11.766 8,3 142 9,9 20,9 4,9 -0,4 15,7
2017 469 13.126 8,6 145 10,5 11,6 3,9 1,8 5,5
2018 469 14.696 9,1 149 10,8 12,0 4,9 3,3 3,2
2019 469 16.040 9,8 148 11,1 9,1 7,6 -1,0 2,5
2020 469 17.233 10,1 155 11,0 7,4 3,3 4,5 -0,5
2021 469 17.275 10,2 151 11,3 0,2 0,8 -2,5 1,9
2022 469 16.349 9,7 152 11,1 -5,4 -4,6 0,5 -1,4
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings since 2019, by year, type of threshold and YGE
components (Numbers in thousands,% change over the previous year. Values at constant 2015 prices)
YGE % change over the previous year
YGE components YGE components
Type of job 2015 2019 2022 2015 2019 2022 2015 2019 2022 2015 2019 2022
YGE HGE
Standard 230 426 563 26,3 48,5 64,2 142 190 241 30,3 40,5 51,5
Full-time short-term 157 62 26 17,9 7,1 2,9 73 47 33 15,5 10,0 7,1
Part-time open-ended 220 186 178 25,0 21,1 20,3 100 101 103 21,3 21,4 22,0
Part-time short-term 80 7 2 9,1 0,8 0,2 44 19 12 9,3 4,1 2,7
Mixed types, also standard 100 151 92 11,4 17,2 10,5 61 68 51 13,0 14,5 11,0
Other mixed types 91 46 17 10,4 5,2 2,0 49 44 27 10,5 9,4 5,7
Total 878 878 878 100 100 100 469 469 469 100 100 100
Full-time 387 488 589 44,1 55,6 67,1 215 237 275 45,8 50,5 58,6
Part-time 299 193 180 34,1 22,0 20,5 144 120 116 30,6 25,6 24,7
Mixed types 191 197 109 21,8 22,4 12,4 110 112 78 23,6 23,9 16,7
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Employees (a) who definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings since 2019, by year, type of threshold
and type of job. Years 2015, 2019 e 2022 (Numbers in thousands; % compositions)
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
29
Table 2.15
Table 2.16
Table 2.17
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019
UNCHANGED
Standard 158 18,0 32,6 26,6 16,7 7,5 23.854 8,7 11,7 2,6 172 1,0 11,9 4,9
Full-time fixed-term 22 2,5 28,0 21,8 6,9 10,3 18.825 16,0 10,8 2,1 164 3,2 10,6 10,1
Part-time open-ended 111 12,6 17,3 71,6 10,8 7,0 14.591 7,5 10,4 1,4 117 4,7 12,0 1,2
Part-time fixed-term 2 0,2 30,1 64,2 10,5 8,4 14.373 19,0 9,9 0,7 126 7,2 11,5 10,3
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 268 30,5 41,0 33,2 12,0 11,4 21.572 16,6 10,5 2,7 172 6,6 11,9 6,5
Others passed to Full-time 41 4,6 36,5 43,2 9,5 13,4 18.413 20,5 9,9 1,5 160 14,3 11,6 3,8
Others passed to open-ended 119 13,5 37,3 48,1 10,1 10,8 17.425 17,1 10,0 1,7 147 6,6 11,8 8,0
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 72 8,3 25,9 30,1 8,5 10,4 18.583 7,0 10,3 -0,2 156 -0,4 11,5 7,7
Other exited from Full-time 16 1,9 31,2 52,7 9,4 9,2 15.302 10,8 10,0 1,4 130 1,0 11,7 8,2
Others exited from open-ended 24 2,7 26,3 46,8 8,1 11,7 16.369 12,2 9,9 0,7 144 7,2 11,5 3,9
OTHER FLOWS 46 5,3 34,8 39,9 8,2 12,9 17.668 15,3 10,0 1,6 153 5,7 11,6 7,4
TOTAL 878 100 33,3 39,9 11,6 10,1 19.604 13,2 10,5 1,9 157 4,9 11,8 5,8
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who definitively escaped from the trap of low YGE since 2019, by type of change in job type and components of YGE. Years 2015-2019. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2015 and 2019 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist. %
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2022
Avg.
growth
rate
2019- 2022
Avg.
growth
rate
2019- 2022
Avg.
growth
rate
2019- 2022
Avg.
growth
rate
2019-
UNCHANGED
Standard 376 42,8 37,4 30,2 14,3 9,7 22.880 0,3 11,2 0,4 172 -0,1 11,9 0,0
Full-time fixed-term 11 1,3 21,8 22,7 5,6 9,1 19.797 1,3 11,6 0,0 163 0,4 10,5 0,9
Part-time open-ended 140 16,0 18,9 73,6 11,0 6,9 14.311 -0,8 9,8 -1,6 122 0,8 12,0 0,0
Part-time fixed-term 0 0,0 16,1 59,7 11,3 6,2 14.182 -0,8 9,7 -2,0 129 1,2 11,4 0,0
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 188 21,4 34,4 32,2 9,0 12,2 20.834 3,7 10,2 0,0 172 2,7 11,9 0,9
Others passed to Full-time 18 2,0 34,3 49,9 10,2 10,8 17.684 5,5 9,7 -1,3 155 7,2 11,7 -0,3
Others passed to open-ended 41 4,6 30,0 52,1 8,8 10,3 16.715 1,5 9,5 -1,1 148 1,7 11,8 1,0
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 50 5,7 41,7 34,5 9,4 12,3 18.363 -3,9 9,9 -0,8 160 -2,5 11,6 -0,7
Other exited from Full-time 10 1,1 34,3 63,0 11,5 7,8 15.238 -4,8 9,8 -1,2 131 -4,0 11,9 0,4
Others exited from open-ended 13 1,5 31,0 45,1 7,3 12,3 16.074 -0,4 9,4 -1,6 149 2,0 11,5 -0,8
OTHER FLOWS 31 3,6 36,9 35,6 7,5 13,4 18.177 -0,4 9,6 -0,8 162 0,4 11,7 0,0
TOTAL 878 100 33,3 39,9 11,6 10,1 20.028 0,7 10,5 -0,3 161 0,8 11,9 0,2
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who definitively escaped from the trap of low YGE since 2019, by type of change in job type and components of YGE. Years 2019-2022. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2019 and 2022 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist. %
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019
UNCHANGED
Standard 94 20,1 48,2 25,8 6,5 12,5 19.718 7,0 9,7 5,6 173 -0,1 11,8 1,5
Full-time fixed-term 17 3,6 34,2 27,5 6,3 13,4 14.070 14,6 10,7 6,2 154 2,1 8,6 5,7
Part-time open-ended 56 12,0 21,7 69,9 7,1 13,0 11.240 4,7 9,3 5,3 102 -1,5 11,8 1,0
Part-time fixed-term 5 1,1 36,9 64,8 8,7 9,6 6.639 8,0 9,4 4,1 91 -0,6 7,8 4,5
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 96 20,4 47,5 30,4 7,5 15,9 20.055 16,5 9,9 5,7 172 4,4 11,8 5,7
Others passed to Full-time 19 4,0 45,3 41,1 7,0 17,6 15.436 18,5 9,7 5,3 156 10,1 10,2 2,2
Others passed to open-ended 56 11,9 41,5 48,8 7,7 13,9 14.644 18,7 9,7 5,2 132 4,0 11,5 8,5
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 48 10,1 43,4 32,9 5,9 14,1 14.885 4,2 9,8 5,0 144 -3,4 10,6 2,7
Other exited from Full-time 17 3,7 41,4 50,2 6,8 13,0 10.712 7,1 9,5 4,7 113 -4,5 10,0 7,1
Others exited from open-ended 21 4,6 38,2 49,1 6,0 15,5 10.983 5,0 9,6 4,5 119 0,7 9,6 -0,2
OTHER FLOWS 39 8,4 42,1 45,4 6,5 15,2 13.157 12,1 9,7 5,1 133 1,5 10,2 5,2
TOTAL 469 100 41,6 40,2 6,9 14,2 15.872 10,9 9,7 5,3 146 1,3 11,1 3,9
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who definitively escaped from the trap of low HGE since 2019, by type of change in job type and components of YGE. Years 2015-2019. (Numbers in thousands,
incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2015 and 2019 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist. %
30
Table 2.18
2.5. Employees who never succeeded to escape the low-earnings trap
A significant share of low-earnings (annual or hourly) employees never permanently exited their condition
(Table 2.19). Those who showed a low YGE dynamics up to 2017, in the following years experienced
significant reductions in the annual earnings due to lower duration and monthly intensity of labour contracts.
The rebound in intensity and duration occurred in 2021 was insufficient to offset the compression occurred
during the pandemic and to bring YGE back to early periods. In 2022, these individuals were also severely
affected by the inflationary flare-up and their HGE returned below the level attained in 2015.
Those who never recovered steadily from low HGE showed similar features. However, they exhibited a greater
overall resilience of YGE thanks mainly to monthly intensity an duration. The dynamics of their HGE though
was very critical, and their level was never permanently above 8 euros: after all, the average level of YGE
itself never exceeded 12 thousand euros.
Among those who never succeeded in raising their earnings, there was the prevalence of part-time contracts,
especially permanent contracts, even among those suffering low HGE (Table 2.20). Those with a low YGE
show a rather significant decrease in standard jobs especially between 2015 and 2019, and an increases in the
intra-year mobility between types of contracts that denoted instability in labor relations.
More than half of these employees did not change the type of job, particularly in the case of part-time open-
ended employees where women prevailed. Nearly stationary HGE were accompanied by weak dynamics of
job intensity (Table 2.21). The wage dynamics of who experienced a worsening of job quality was decidedly
more critical: the termination of standard jobs came along with a significant reduction in employment intensity
and a decline in HGE.
Over 2019-2022, HGE declined significantly in real terms also for those whose job quality remained
unchanged or even worsened, particularly for those who had a standard job in 2019 (Table 2.22). HGE
worsened as well for part-time permanent jobs. The evolution of employees who never left low HGE appears
critical. Up to 2019, the decline in HGE is quite conspicuous and widespread, regardless of changes in
contractual conditions (Table 2.23). Duration and intensity of labor grew slightly, containing the regressive
dynamics of total remuneration. The latter keeps growing only for employees who have been able to improve
their job quality. On average in 2022 the annual pay of those who never exceeded YGE threshold remains very
low (below 12 thousand euros), as does the hourly pay (below 8 euros) (Table 2.24). HGE deteriorated further
after 2019 and this decline was finally offset by increases in intensity and duration only for individuals whose
contractual conditions improved.
The YGE of persistent employees grew appreciably only for the youngest who started from very low levels in
2015 and that remained firmly below the levels of older employees (Table 2.25 and Table 2.26). About three-
quarters of young people aged 25-29 in 2022 (who were therefore 18-22 in 2015) experienced YGE below the
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022
UNCHANGED
Standard 160 34,2 47,2 27,2 7,2 13,8 19.901 -0,3 9,9 0,4 172 -0,2 11,7 -0,5
Full-time fixed-term 15 3,2 30,9 29,9 5,4 13,5 13.852 1,6 10,9 -0,2 153 0,6 8,3 1,2
Part-time open-ended 74 15,9 22,6 71,3 7,4 12,2 10.729 -1,8 8,9 -1,6 105 0,8 11,4 -1,0
Part-time fixed-term 4 0,9 29,7 67,4 7,4 9,4 6.107 0,9 8,8 -2,2 92 2,2 7,5 0,9
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 81 17,3 46,1 29,8 7,2 15,7 19.710 5,8 9,9 0,3 172 3,4 11,6 2,0
Others passed to Full-time 14 2,9 43,9 43,4 6,4 16,1 13.853 6,6 9,2 -0,8 153 9,9 9,8 -2,2
Others passed to open-ended 35 7,5 41,3 51,8 6,6 13,7 13.885 7,4 9,3 -1,2 133 4,0 11,3 4,5
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 30 6,3 51,6 33,3 5,9 16,4 15.373 -6,6 9,5 -0,4 154 -3,5 10,6 -2,8
Other exited from Full-time 10 2,1 41,4 53,7 6,6 13,3 10.827 -5,8 9,2 -1,4 118 -5,9 10,0 1,6
Others exited from open-ended 15 3,1 40,6 50,1 5,4 15,9 10.642 -4,9 9,1 -1,4 124 1,6 9,5 -5,1
OTHER FLOWS 31 6,5 44,1 44,8 6,0 14,7 13.021 1,2 9,3 -1,1 138 1,7 10,1 0,6
TOTAL 469 100 41,6 40,2 6,9 14,2 16.249 0,8 9,6 -0,4 150 1,1 11,1 0,1
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who definitively escaped from the trap of low HGE since 2019, by type of change in job type and components of YGE. Years 2019-2022. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2019 and 2022 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist. %
31
threshold. Among the employees who never experienced low earnings, YGE increased with age, passing from
23,000 euros of the youngest to 31,000 euros of the eldest. The same does not happen for individuals below
the threshold: the 20,000 euros recorded in 2022 by the segment that succeeded to escape low YGE remained
almost constant by age group, as did the 10,000 euros of the segment that never managed to permanently exit
from low YGE. A similar dynamic has been recorded for HGE.
As expected, gender wage gaps widened over the observed period: the wage dynamics were systematically
weaker for women not only in terms of HGE but because of the lower intensity of labour contracts.
Table 2.19
Table 2.20
Years Employees YGE HGE
Monthly
intensity Duration YGE HGE
Monthly
intensity Duration
YGE
2015 1.405 11.049 9,9 118 9,5
2016 1.405 12.092 9,9 118 10,3 9,4 0,6 -0,1 8,9
2017 1.405 12.132 9,9 117 10,5 0,3 -0,6 -0,8 1,8
2018 1.405 11.923 9,8 116 10,4 -1,7 -0,6 -0,8 -0,3
2019 1.405 11.400 9,8 114 10,2 -4,4 0,0 -2,3 -2,1
2020 1.405 10.978 9,9 113 9,9 -3,7 0,3 -0,5 -3,5
2021 1.405 11.735 9,8 117 10,3 6,9 -0,9 3,6 4,1
2022 1.405 10.114 9,0 117 9,6 -13,8 -7,8 0,2 -6,7
HGE
2015 580 10.203 8,5 128 9,4
2016 580 11.368 8,5 129 10,3 11,4 0,1 1,2 10,0
2017 580 11.519 8,4 131 10,5 1,3 -1,8 0,9 2,2
2018 580 11.447 8,1 133 10,6 -0,6 -3,0 1,7 0,6
2019 580 11.311 7,9 135 10,6 -1,2 -2,3 1,2 -0,1
2020 580 11.199 8,0 135 10,3 -1,0 1,0 0,6 -2,6
2021 580 11.885 8,1 138 10,7 6,1 0,8 1,9 3,4
2022 580 11.467 7,8 140 10,6 -3,5 -4,0 1,2 -0,6
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who never definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings, by year, type of threshold and YGE components
(Numbers in thousands,% change over the previous year. Values at constant 2015 prices)
YGE % change over the previous year
YGE components YGE components
Condizioni contrattuali 2015 2019 2022 2015 2019 2022 2015 2019 2022 2015 2019 2022
YGE HGE
Standard 309 228 246 22,0 16,3 17,5 153 156 180 26,4 26,8 31,0
Full-time short-term 164 180 185 11,7 12,8 13,1 67 62 60 11,6 10,7 10,3
Part-time open-ended 555 611 590 39,5 43,5 42,0 184 184 176 31,6 31,7 30,4
Part-time short-term 125 101 93 8,9 7,2 6,6 56 38 34 9,6 6,5 5,9
Mixed types, also standard 115 111 135 8,2 7,9 9,6 59 65 66 10,2 11,2 11,4
Other mixed types 137 174 157 9,7 12,4 11,2 61 75 63 10,6 13,0 10,9
Total 1.405 1.405 1.405 100 100 100 580 580 580 100 100 100
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Employees (a) who never definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings, by year, type of threshold and
type of job. Years 2015, 2019 e 2022 (Numbers in thousands; % compositions)
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
32
Table 2.21
Table 2.22
Table 2.23
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019
UNCHANGED
Standard 154 10,9 14,8 34,2 8,1 9,2 21.022 -1,6 11,5 0,3 169 -0,1 10,9 -1,9
Full-time fixed-term 81 5,8 21,1 35,6 6,3 11,3 10.771 0,6 10,0 -0,3 147 0,5 7,3 0,5
Part-time open-ended 438 31,2 12,2 76,6 7,3 10,2 9.568 -0,5 9,5 0,0 86 -0,6 11,7 0,1
Part-time fixed-term 30 2,2 27,1 68,2 8,2 9,6 6.158 1,2 9,2 -0,5 89 -0,1 7,5 1,7
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 75 5,3 34,4 37,5 8,4 15,5 17.151 5,2 9,9 0,3 168 4,3 10,3 0,4
Others passed to Full-time 47 3,3 32,6 47,5 6,8 15,5 10.955 2,5 9,3 -0,5 140 7,5 8,4 -4,2
Others passed to open-ended 138 9,8 30,4 62,2 8,3 12,7 10.264 4,9 9,1 0,0 101 0,8 11,1 4,1
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 156 11,1 22,5 41,2 6,4 10,4 10.997 -13,6 9,8 -1,8 123 -8,5 9,2 -3,9
Other exited from Full-time 66 4,7 29,3 53,4 7,1 12,2 9.105 -3,3 9,3 -0,5 103 -6,3 9,5 3,7
Others exited from open-ended 98 7,0 26,4 57,5 6,4 13,3 8.438 -6,8 9,2 -1,2 103 -1,3 8,9 -4,3
OTHER FLOWS 124 8,8 32,1 54,4 6,9 13,5 9.679 0,7 9,2 -0,6 115 -0,5 9,2 1,8
TOTAL 1.405 100 21,7 56,7 7,3 11,5 11.400 -1,5 9,7 -0,4 115 -1,0 10,2 -0,2
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who never definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings, by type of change in job type and components of YGE. Years 2015-2019. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2015 and 2019 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist. %
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022
UNCHANGED
Standard 122 8,7 18,3 32,1 9,1 10,3 10.185 -20,5 10,0 -4,0 162 -1,3 6,3 -16,2
Full-time fixed-term 85 6,0 19,0 34,8 5,8 12,0 10.854 0,2 9,4 -1,7 150 0,7 7,7 1,3
Part-time open-ended 472 33,6 12,6 77,4 7,7 10,0 8.329 -4,4 8,7 -2,4 87 0,3 10,9 -2,4
Part-time fixed-term 28 2,0 20,1 69,6 7,8 8,6 5.912 0,0 8,6 -2,2 92 1,2 7,5 1,0
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 124 8,8 33,3 34,5 7,6 13,6 16.690 17,2 9,3 -0,7 170 11,2 10,5 6,2
Others passed to Full-time 65 4,6 30,5 48,3 6,6 14,0 11.824 6,1 8,8 -1,9 149 12,5 9,0 -3,9
Others passed to open-ended 134 9,5 29,9 55,5 7,0 12,5 12.050 11,1 8,8 -1,2 124 5,3 11,0 6,8
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 106 7,6 24,7 39,0 7,2 12,4 9.821 -19,9 9,1 -4,6 132 -8,0 8,2 -8,7
Other exited from Full-time 50 3,6 26,9 54,5 6,9 11,4 8.785 -8,2 8,8 -2,8 110 -7,3 9,2 1,9
Others exited from open-ended 96 6,8 24,6 61,2 6,5 12,5 8.366 -9,3 8,7 -3,3 110 0,9 8,8 -7,1
OTHER FLOWS 124 8,9 29,8 54,4 6,2 12,5 9.900 1,2 8,7 -2,0 122 2,1 9,4 1,1
TOTAL 1.405 100 21,7 56,7 7,3 11,5 10.114 -2,7 9,0 -2,4 120 1,5 9,6 -2,1
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who never definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings, by type of change in job type and components of YGE. Years 2019-2022. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2019 and 2022 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist. %
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019 2019
Avg.growth
rate 2015-
2019
UNCHANGED
Standard 91 15,7 24,1 37,2 4,9 11,1 16.106 -0,8 8,0 -1,3 175 0,4 11,5 0,1
Full-time fixed-term 23 4,0 26,3 36,9 5,9 12,7 9.725 0,0 8,3 -3,1 149 1,6 7,9 1,5
Part-time open-ended 122 21,0 15,6 73,0 5,0 14,4 9.240 -0,3 7,9 -1,4 101 1,0 11,7 0,2
Part-time fixed-term 11 1,8 29,4 66,7 6,7 11,5 5.530 0,0 8,0 -2,6 90 1,0 7,6 1,7
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 65 11,2 40,9 36,3 5,3 16,8 15.334 7,0 7,8 -1,8 174 5,5 11,3 3,3
Others passed to Full-time 23 4,0 37,1 46,7 5,5 17,9 11.059 4,8 7,9 -3,5 150 10,5 9,3 -1,7
Others passed to open-ended 61 10,6 33,1 55,8 5,7 16,4 10.691 7,3 7,9 -2,0 121 4,1 11,3 5,1
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 62 10,7 28,0 38,7 4,6 12,6 10.997 -10,7 8,1 -4,4 139 -4,9 9,7 -1,8
Other exited from Full-time 24 4,1 33,8 51,0 5,9 15,3 8.504 -2,7 8,0 -2,7 112 -4,4 9,5 4,7
Others exited from open-ended 40 6,9 27,5 57,8 4,9 15,6 8.144 -5,4 8,1 -3,4 109 1,3 9,3 -3,4
OTHER FLOWS 57 9,9 32,4 53,7 5,9 15,5 9.797 1,4 8,0 -2,7 127 1,7 9,7 2,4
TOTAL 580 100 27,7 51,3 5,3 14,4 11.311 0,1 7,9 -2,3 134 1,4 10,6 1,0
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who never definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings, by type of change in job type and components of HGE. Years 2015-2019. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2015 and 2019 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist.
%
33
Table 2.24
Table 2.25
25-34
yrs. Females
ISCED
6-7-8 Foreign. 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022 2022
Avg.growth
rate 2019-
2022
UNCHANGED
Standard 111 19,1 29,5 35,8 5,1 13,1 15.189 -1,2 7,6 -0,3 175 -0,1 11,4 -0,7
Full-time fixed-term 23 3,9 22,7 36,6 5,6 13,0 10.059 2,9 8,2 -0,1 151 0,9 8,1 2,1
Part-time open-ended 131 22,5 15,5 73,9 5,2 14,3 8.659 -2,2 7,4 -1,2 103 0,3 11,3 -1,2
Part-time fixed-term 9 1,6 22,4 68,3 6,6 10,0 5.337 1,3 7,7 -1,2 91 1,1 7,6 1,4
IMPROVED
Passed to Standard 69 11,9 36,8 34,6 5,3 16,1 15.764 9,4 8,0 0,0 175 5,9 11,3 3,2
Others passed to Full-time 26 4,5 33,6 48,4 5,4 16,7 11.303 6,2 7,9 -1,2 154 10,9 9,3 -3,1
Others passed to open-ended 54 9,3 30,7 54,3 5,5 15,3 11.519 10,3 7,9 -0,1 130 4,3 11,2 5,8
WORSENED
Exited from Standard 44 7,7 35,2 39,4 4,9 14,4 11.590 -10,0 7,9 -2,2 148 -4,8 9,9 -3,4
Other exited from Full-time 19 3,4 30,8 53,9 5,4 13,7 8.600 -4,3 7,8 -1,1 116 -6,7 9,5 3,7
Others exited from open-ended 35 6,0 27,8 60,6 4,9 15,6 8.255 -6,5 7,7 -2,5 116 1,6 9,2 -5,6
OTHER FLOWS 58 10,1 31,8 54,1 5,4 14,3 9.932 1,5 7,9 -0,8 129 1,0 9,8 1,3
TOTAL 580 100 27,7 51,3 5,3 14,4 11.467 0,6 7,7 -0,9 139 1,3 10,6 0,1
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Employees (a) who never definitively escaped from the trap of low earnings, by type of change in job type and components of HGE. Years 2019-2022. (Numbers in
thousands, incidence%, Annual average rates of growth. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Changes in job type between
2019 and 2022 Total
Incidence % YGE HGE Monthly intensity Duration
Dist.
%
25-29 30-34 35-39 40-44 45-49 50-54 55-60 Female Male
Total employees 7.715 298 744 1.015 1.216 1.480 1.484 1.477 3.049 4.666
Never below any threshold 70,4 26,3 49,4 65,9 72,8 76,1 77,8 77,8 62,4 75,7
Above the thresholds from 2019 11,4 37,2 24,4 14,2 10,0 8,2 7,2 6,2 11,5 11,3
Never definitively above the threshold 18,2 36,6 26,2 20,0 17,2 15,6 15,0 15,9 26,1 13,0
YGE in 2022
Total 23.972 17.374 19.719 22.082 23.579 24.746 25.913 26.345 20.422 26.292
Never below any threshold 28.196 22.328 23.811 25.982 27.275 28.338 29.622 30.421 25.475 29.661
Above the thresholds from 2019 20.028 19.885 20.962 20.367 19.658 19.476 19.503 19.661 18.537 21.020
Never definitively above the threshold 10.114 11.268 10.862 10.445 10.199 10.033 9.731 9.038 9.189 11.324
Total 1,0 9,3 4,7 2,4 1,1 0,5 0,1 -0,5 0,8 1,1
Never below any threshold 0,3 3,3 2,4 1,7 0,8 0,2 -0,1 -0,6 0,2 0,4
Above the thresholds from 2019 12,4 18,5 15,3 12,7 10,8 10,1 9,8 9,7 11,6 13,0
Never definitively above the threshold -1,3 8,2 1,8 -1,0 -1,9 -2,2 -2,5 -4,5 -1,4 -1,1
HGE in 2022
Total 13,3 10,0 11,1 12,3 13,0 13,6 14,2 14,7 12,5 13,7
Never below any threshold 14,3 11,0 11,9 13,2 13,9 14,4 15,1 15,6 13,7 14,6
Above the thresholds from 2019 10,5 10,1 10,8 10,7 10,4 10,4 10,4 10,5 10,3 10,6
Never definitively above the threshold 9,0 8,8 8,9 9,0 9,0 9,0 9,0 9,1 8,8 9,2
Total 0,1 1,9 1,6 1,2 0,4 -0,1 -0,4 -0,7 -0,1 0,0
Never below any threshold 0,3 2,5 2,0 1,6 0,8 0,2 -0,2 -0,6 0,2 0,3
Above the thresholds from 2019 1,2 2,7 2,5 1,5 0,6 0,2 0,0 -0,1 0,9 1,2
Never definitively above the threshold -1,2 0,6 -0,2 -0,9 -1,4 -1,6 -1,7 -2,1 -1,2 -1,4
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
% Composition
Average annual rate of growth 2015-2022
Average annual rate of growth 2015-2022
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Gross earnings of employees (a), by age class, gender, and level of gross earnings (Numbers in thousands, % composition, Average annual
rates of change. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Level of gross earnings
Age class Gender
Totale
34
Table 2.26
Part 3. Employers and low earnings
One of the side issue in the debate on low earning is which economic activities and what kind of enterprises
generate them. Although poor pay conditions are spread across all types of businesses and economic activities,
there are important differences that are worth of investigation. Based on the results and approaches described
in Part 2 of the paper, in this paragraph we analyze, firstly, low earnings on a cross-section perspective. By
exploiting the link between employees and their main employer on a yearly basis, we provide an insight of the
general characteristics of the business structure (such as economic activity, size, and type of governance)
associated to the level of gross earnings in years 2015-2022. Secondly, we investigate on a longitudinal
perspective, which conditions and which characteristics of the employers were associated to the transitions of
workers from below to above the thresholds, or to the employees that never had the opportunity to escape from
the low-earnings trap.
3.1. Business structure, employment and employees
Istat business register (BR) counts about 4.5 mln enterprises: one out of three has at least one employee, so
about 1.5 mln enterprises are involved in our analysis each year (Table 3.1). Most of them (1.25 mln) are
micro-enterprises with less than 10 persons employed. More than 500 thousands are individual enterprises,
although 75% of the employees in the register are concentrated in enterprises with more complex governance
and a significant portion of employees work in larger enterprises. The business register estimates 12.7 mln
Totale 0-2 3 4-5 6 7-8
Total employees 7.715 2.311 4.048 367 958 30
Never below any threshold 70,4 66,3 70,9 66,5 79,3 80,8
Above the thresholds from 2019 11,4 11,1 11,4 16,4 10,2 11,0
Never definitively above the threshold 18,2 22,6 17,7 17,1 10,4 8,2
YGE in 2022
Total 23.972 19.932 23.237 25.530 35.748 39.115
Never below any threshold 28.196 23.576 27.091 30.292 40.510 43.605
Above the thresholds from 2019 20.028 18.834 19.450 21.780 24.543 27.171
Never definitively above the threshold 10.114 9.786 10.248 10.640 10.516 10.934
Total 1,0 0,3 0,8 2,7 1,9 2,8
Never below any threshold 0,3 -0,3 0,1 1,5 1,4 2,2
Above the thresholds from 2019 12,4 10,2 12,0 16,5 17,4 20,4
Never definitively above the threshold -1,3 -1,6 -1,1 0,4 -1,6 -1,3
HGE in 2022
Total 13,2 11,2 12,9 14,2 19,2 20,6
Never below any threshold 14,3 11,9 13,8 15,6 20,7 22,1
Above the thresholds from 2019 10,5 9,8 10,3 11,4 12,9 14,2
Never definitively above the threshold 9,0 8,8 9,0 9,4 9,7 10,1
Total 0,0 -0,6 -0,2 0,9 0,9 1,6
Never below any threshold 0,3 -0,4 0,1 1,4 1,3 2,0
Above the thresholds from 2019 1,0 0,2 0,9 2,4 2,7 3,5
Never definitively above the threshold -1,3 -1,3 -1,3 -0,8 -1,5 -1,1
Sources: Istat, Population register 2015-2022, Business register 2015-2021, Income register 2015-2022. Inps, Uniemens 2015-2022.
Note: (a) Only persistent employ ees
Average annual rate of growth 2015-2022
Gross earnings of employees (a), by level of education and level of gross earnings (Numbers in
thousands, % composition, Average annual rates of change. Values at constant 2015 prices)
Posizione rispetto alla soglia
Education level (ISCED)
Average annual rate of growth 2015-2022
% Composition
35
employees30. The difference between the number of employees estimated in the register (a weekly average)
and the headcount of the individuals enrolled during the whole year – at least for a few weeks – deserves some
comment. In those domains where lower quality contracts are more frequently used, especially fixed-term
contracts, the duration of labour relations is shorter. The difference between headcounts and the standard
measure of employment, that would be null if jobs were ideally continuous along the year, is present in every
economic sector and size class, and it is extremely interesting since it describes at a glance the degree of
stability of jobs in each specific domain. In 2021, the 14.5 mln individuals that were enrolled in industry and
services correspond to 12.7 mln employees in the average week. This 14% scrap is an average, and varies
considerably across sectors, the difference being greater in some services, like for instance horeca, support
services (mainly cleaning and temporary work agencies), recreation, education, and constructions. About 4.5
mln workers are involved in these sectors and they count for 3,4 mln employees. The same scrap is lower than
5% in Industry and Finance where more than 70% of individuals experienced only standard jobs during the
year. In some sectors (horeca, recreation, and support services) there is a widespread use of fixed term contracts
but in others (trade and most services serving households) part-time contracts prevail31.
Table 3.1
3.2. Employers and gross earnings
The tie between standard jobs and the level of hourly wages previously highlighted inevitably implies that
firms providing better pay conditions are also those where full-time, permanent jobs prevail (Table 3.2). Recent
studies remark that the number of these firms is relatively small but that they are large enough to recruit the
bulk of non-agricultural workforce and the most performing activities where hourly wages are on average
30 According to international standards, the business register reports the annual average of the weekly number of
employees by enterprise. An individual enrolled for 6 months, for example, is equivalent to 0.5 employees on an annual
basis.
31 It is important to make clear that in this context we concentrate on the individuals traced in the pay roll of the enterprises,
with a head-count approach; thus the term employee will be used to address these individuals and not their equivalent
measure in terms of employment. That definition of the register though is adopted to determine, for example, the size
class of enterprises.
Employers and employees, by type of contract, Nace, business size and governance. Year 2021
Nace
N
(.000) % Avg.
always
Standard
always
Full-time
fixed term
always Part-
time open-
ended
always
Part-time
fixed-term
other
combi-
nations
Total 1.468 12.746 100 8,7 14.530 100 14,0 52,0 9,8 18,0 7,7 12,5
NACE
C MANUFACTURING 212 3.261 25,6 15,4 3.373 23,2 103 76,0 5,2 9,3 1,7 7,8
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 10 304 2,4 30,6 312 2,1 2,5 79,2 4,5 7,4 2,3 6,6
F CONSTRUCTION 183 929 7,3 5,1 1.100 7,6 18,4 58,7 15,7 6,9 2,7 16,0
G TRADE 356 2.215 17,4 6,2 2.435 16,8 9,9 49,1 5,0 26,5 7,5 11,9
H TRANSPORTATION 51 1.012 7,9 19,9 1.108 7,6 9,5 62,5 9,5 9,8 4,5 13,7
I HORECA 215 999 7,8 4,6 1.503 10,3 50,4 15,6 20,3 25,0 19,0 20,2
J INFORMATION 40 511 4,0 12,9 561 3,9 9,9 71,5 7,5 13,1 2,2 5,7
K FINANCE 22 452 3,5 20,6 474 3,3 5,0 79,8 1,7 14,2 0,6 3,7
L,M PROFESSIONAL 140 685 5,4 4,9 760 5,2 10,9 57,8 6,6 21,4 4,4 9,9
N SUPPORT SERVICES 57 1.297 10,2 22,6 1.616 11,1 24,7 23,4 20,9 20,6 15,8 19,3
P EDUCATION 11 83 0,7 7,3 104 0,7 24,3 26,1 5,9 29,2 26,9 11,9
Q HUMAN HEALTH 69 653 5,1 9,5 723 5,0 10,7 32,2 4,2 37,4 13,4 12,8
R RECREATION 21 103 0,8 5,0 172 1,2 66,3 20,2 23,4 17,4 23,9 15,1
S OTHER SERVICES 81 242 1,9 3,0 290 2,0 19,5 31,5 6,2 36,9 10,9 14,5
SIZE CLASS
Micro (<10 pers.employed) 1.257 3.119 24,5 2,5 3.972 27,3 27,3 35,3 10,1 28,3 11,7 14,7
Small (10-49 pers.employed) 182 3.182 25,0 17,5 3.552 24,4 11,6 54,7 10,4 14,6 6,6 13,7
Medium (50-249 pers.employed) 24 2.356 18,5 97,5 2.534 17,4 7,6 63,3 8,8 11,5 5,5 10,9
Large (>250 pers.employed) 4 4.089 32,1 955,5 4.472 30,8 9,4 58,4 9,7 15,2 6,2 10,5
GOVERNANCE
Individual firms 522 1.062 8,4 2,0 1.357 9,3 28 27,2 9,0 35,6 13,4 14,8
Other partnerships 284 1.064 8,4 3,7 1.289 8,8 21 40,2 11,1 24,6 9,9 14,2
Joint-stock companies 616 9.361 73,4 14,9 10.633 72,6 14 58,5 10,2 13,5 6,0 11,8
Other companies 45 1.259 9,9 27,9 1.370 9,4 9 37,6 6,8 28,9 12,9 13,8
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals in the resident population (only residents in household). (b) Av erage w eekly employ ees.
diff%
Head-
count
vs. BR
Business Register (BR) data
Employees (b) by type of labour contract in the year (incidence, % )
Individuals (a) in the pay-roll of the enterprises during the year
No.
enter-
prises
(.000)
Number
(.000) %
36
above 15 euros (Chart 3.1)32. Apart from them, hourly wages become poorer as firms seem acting mostly on
job intensity offering part-time and fixed-term contracts. Our entire set of low-paid employees gradually
experienced lower intensities and durations of the employment relationships, showing hourly wages steadily
below the average. In this respect the firm scale and the type of governance also matter. Employees of micro-
enterprises and individual firms show very low annual earnings due to lower levels of all the wage components.
On the other hand, if we compare the distribution of employees by YGE and by HGE it is clear that the first
distribution is less concentrated than the latter (Chart 3.2). Take for example the median value in YGE
distribution: it was about 18 thousands euro in 2021 (at constant 2015 prices). This median ranges from 31,000
for an employees in finance and communications to 12,000 euro for an employees in personal services, 23,000
euro for industry and to 19,000 in construction, 16,000 in business services and 13,000 in Horeca. One half of
all employees has a YGE between 9 and 25,000 euro. Consider now HGE. The overall median is 10.4 euro,
ranging from 9.3 in personal services to 11.5 in industry, peaking 16.3 in finance and communications.
Interquartile range is between 9 and 13 euro. Only for a small part of workers the variability in YGE can be
explained by HGE, while intensity and duration play a major role in explaining the differences among
economic activities.
Between 2015 and 2022 the dynamics of real gross earnings showed a sharp decline (Table 3.3): the average
yearly change was -1.3%. Up till 2018, the decline was sharper in Horeca and in some services serving
households. The reduction in monthly intensity of jobs drove the decline, due a more intense use of part-time
and short-term contracts. In the same time span, real HGE also lost ground declining also in the following
years until 2021, although with some remarkable differences among sectors. In manufacturing, for instance,
real hourly earnings were quite stable, in construction and trade they decreased, in Horeca they marginally
recovered from the former decline. Between 2018 and 2021, duration and monthly intensity had the most
important role in driving the increase in annual earnings. In 2022, the rise in inflation cut real earnings quite
uniformly across sectors.
32 These aspects were studied in a cross section analysis in Istat (2022).
37
Table 3.2
Gross earnings of employees, by Nace, size class and governance. Year 2021 (values at constant 2015 prices)
Nace
Hourly
gross
earnings
Monthly
intensity
(b)
Duration
(c)
Hourly
gross
earnings
Monthly
intensity Duration
Total 14.530 20.056 13,0 149,5 10,3 100 100 100 100
NACE
C MANUFACTURING 3.373 25.065 13,5 164,4 11,3 125 104 110 110
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 312 28.934 15,7 161,4 11,4 144 121 108 111
F CONSTRUCTION 1.100 18.851 11,7 161,6 10,0 94 90 108 97
G TRADE 2.435 19.514 12,6 145,0 10,7 97 97 97 104
H TRANSPORTATION 1.108 21.731 12,8 157,7 10,7 108 98 105 105
I HORECA 1.503 9.033 9,7 117,2 7,9 45 75 78 77
J INFORMATION 561 28.466 16,5 160,3 10,7 142 127 107 105
K FINANCE 474 42.635 23,2 157,1 11,7 213 178 105 114
L,M PROFESSIONAL 760 24.007 14,8 152,6 10,6 120 113 102 103
N SUPPORT SERVICES 1.616 12.574 10,1 135,7 9,2 63 77 91 89
P EDUCATION 104 12.025 11,9 110,5 9,2 60 91 74 89
Q HUMAN HEALTH 723 14.554 10,8 130,7 10,3 73 83 87 100
R RECREATION 172 12.565 13,2 128,0 7,4 63 101 86 72
S OTHER SERVICES 290 11.263 8,8 128,9 9,9 56 68 86 96
SIZE CLASS
Micro (<10 pers.employed) 3.972 13.504 10,7 133,8 9,4 67 82 90 91
Small (10-49 pers.employed) 3.552 18.948 11,9 153,8 10,4 94 91 103 101
Medium (50-249 pers.employed) 2.534 23.433 13,7 158,4 10,8 117 105 106 105
Large (>250 pers.employed) 4.472 24.841 15,1 153,3 10,7 124 116 103 104
GOVERNANCE
Individual firms 1.347 11.128 9,7 123,3 9,3 55 74 82 91
Other partnerships 1.279 14.224 10,4 140,1 9,8 71 80 94 95
Joint-stock companies 10.552 22.227 13,7 155,1 10,5 111 105 104 102
Other companies 1.352 17.527 12,5 137,3 10,2 87 95 92 100
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals in the resident population (only residents in household). (b) Number of w orkable hours per month. (c) Number of months as
employ ees
Components
Number
(.000)
Components
Per capita gross earnings in 2021
Annual
gross
earnings
Annual
gross
earnings
Indices. Base: Total=100
38
Chart 3.1. NACE sections and Manufacture divisions by average hourly gross earnings and monthly
intensity of jobs. Bubbles are proportional to average duration of labour contracts. Year 2021
a) NACE sections
b) Manufacture divisions
Chart 3.2
BDE
C
F
G
H
I
J
M
N
P
Q
RS
100
110
120
130
140
150
160
170
8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17
M
o
n
th
ly
w
o
rk
ab
le
h
o
u
rs
Hourly gross earnings
10
11
12
13
14
1516
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
2627
28
29
30
31
32
33
140
145
150
155
160
165
170
175
10 12 14 16 18 20 22
M
o
n
th
ly
w
o
rk
ab
le
h
o
u
rs
Hourly gross earnings
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
0 4.000 8.000 12.000 16.000 20.000 24.000 28.000 32.000 36.000 40.000 44.000 48.000 52.000 56.000 60.000
Yearly gross earnings (YGE)
Employees by Yearly gross earnings (YGE) and Nace (Year 2021. Cumulated %)
Industry Construction Trade and Horeca
Business services Communication and Finance Personal services
TOTAL
0
10
20
30
40
50
60
70
80
90
100
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20
Hourly gross earnings (HGE)
Employees by Hourly gross earnings (HGE) and Nace (Year 2021. Cumulated %)
Industry Construction Trade and Horeca
Business services Communication and Finance Personal services
TOTAL
39
Table 3.3
3.3. Employers and employees with low earnings
The economic activities with a high propensity to pay low wages emerge quite clearly from Table 3.4 and most
of them belong to services. In Horeca and recreation, the sectors most affected by undeclared employment,
more than two employees out of three is below YGE threshold. In support services (where subcontracting is
frequent), education and other household services more than 50% of employees have low YGE. In construction
the incidence of employees below the annual threshold, which was more than 30% in 2015, declined due
mainly to an increase in the duration of labour contracts: this sector benefited strongly from the specific fiscal
incentives provided by the Government to refurbish private outlets.
The incidence of low HGE follows in part the same scheme: nevertheless, it should be noticed the higher share
of individuals below the threshold in support services and in the other services where contractual hourly wages
are generally very low and subcontracting very high.
Low earnings have a relatively minor impact in manufacturing; nonetheless, these activities still account for a
remarkable share of low wage earners, given that they involve a large number of employees. If we consider
the threshold on annual earnings, nearly 10% of employees below the threshold come from manufacturing and
another 15% from trade activities. Horeca accounts almost for another 25%, and support services nearly 20%.
On the other side, if we consider hourly gross earnings we find that support services account for 30% of total
individuals below the threshold. Manufacturing, trade and the other services serving households also provide
larger shares. All these sectors together explain more than two thirds of individuals with low hourly earnings.
If we consider two-digit NACE, and in particular the first twenty divisions with higher incidence of employees
below the threshold of YGE, we find out that they account for more than 50% of total employees in industry
and services and nearly 80% of employees with low annual earnings (Table 3.5). At the top of the rank, we
find services like recreation, Horeca, cleaning services, personal and education services, employment agencies.
In all these cases, more than a half of employees are in the low-wage area. We find in this rank also
manufacturing activities dealing with food products and wearing apparels. Also construction belong to this
restricted set. The average incidence of individuals with low annual earnings of this top twenty activities is
45.1%, more than the triple than the rest of NACE divisions.
Most of the sectors rank similarly with reference to low hourly gross earnings. In this case, the top twenty
divisions include textiles and leather in manufacturing and all the logistics. At the top of the rank we find the
activities related to security and cleaning of offices and buildings, often tied to outsourcing by larger enterprises
and public administration. These top twenty divisions account for more than 75% of the employees with low
hourly wages.
Nace
2015-
2018
2018-
2021
2015-
2022 (d)
2015-
2018
2018-
2021
2015-
2022 (d)
2015-
2018
2018-
2021
2015-
2022 (d)
2015-
2018
2018-
2021
2015-
2022 (d)
Total -0,8 0,3 -1,3 -0,8 -0,1 -1,4 -0,4 0,3 -0,1 0,3 0,1 0,2
C MANUFACTURING -0,3 0,3 -1,0 -0,6 0,0 -1,1 -0,1 0,1 0,0 0,4 0,2 0,1
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY -0,5 -0,3 -1,5 -0,9 -0,8 -1,8 0,4 0,3 0,3 0,1 0,2 0,1
F CONSTRUCTION 0,0 0,8 -0,3 -1,2 -0,4 -1,5 -0,2 0,2 0,0 1,3 1,0 1,2
G TRADE 0,1 0,0 -1,1 0,0 -0,5 -1,2 -0,5 0,1 -0,1 0,6 0,4 0,3
H TRANSPORTATION 0,0 0,0 -1,0 -0,4 -0,2 -1,3 0,0 0,1 0,1 0,4 0,1 0,2
I HORECA -1,8 -0,6 -1,4 -0,8 0,4 -1,3 -1,5 0,5 -0,3 0,5 -1,4 0,1
J INFORMATION -0,7 -0,6 -1,5 -1,0 -0,5 -1,6 -0,1 0,2 0,0 0,4 -0,3 0,0
K FINANCE 0,4 0,2 -1,0 -0,3 0,1 -1,2 -0,2 0,1 0,0 0,8 0,0 0,2
L,M PROFESSIONAL 1,3 0,3 -0,3 0,0 -0,2 -1,0 0,3 0,3 0,2 1,1 0,2 0,5
N SUPPORT SERVICES -0,1 1,0 -0,4 -0,7 0,0 -1,3 0,4 0,9 0,7 0,2 0,1 0,2
P EDUCATION 1,4 -0,4 -0,3 -0,5 -0,5 -1,5 0,2 0,4 0,4 1,7 -0,3 0,8
Q HUMAN HEALTH -0,6 0,2 -1,3 -0,7 0,7 -1,1 -0,2 0,0 -0,1 0,3 -0,5 -0,2
R RECREATION -1,5 2,3 -1,2 -0,8 1,6 -1,1 -1,3 1,4 -0,2 0,6 -0,7 0,1
S OTHER SERVICES -0,9 0,5 -1,2 -0,7 -0,2 -1,3 -0,9 0,2 -0,2 0,6 0,5 0,3
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals in the resident population (only resients in household). (b) Number of w orkable hours per month. (c) Number of months as employ ees. (d) 2022 data are prov isional, since
Business register data are referred to 2021
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Per capita gross earnings of employees, by Nace and component. Years 2015-2022 (average annual rates of growth at constant 2015 prices)
Annual gross earnings Hourly gross earnings Monthly intensity (b) Duration (c)
40
Table 3.4
Table 3.5
3.5. The enterprises and the employees who escape from the trap of low earnings
In Part 2 we described the behavior of the cohort of employees persistently in employment in the period 2015-
2022; in particular, we analyzed the exit of some individuals from conditions of low earnings. The focus was
on the group of 878 thousand employees who improved their earning conditions starting from 2019 after
Employees (a) with low gross earnings, by Nace and type of threshold. Years 2015-2022
2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 (b) 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020 2021 2022 (b)
LOW ANNUAL EARNINGS
TOTALE 30,3 29,5 30,2 30,1 30,1 29,9 29,7 29,3 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
C MANUFACTURING 13,7 13,0 13,0 12,7 12,4 12,4 12,2 12,4 11,4 10,9 10,3 10,0 9,7 9,9 9,5 9,5
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 9,5 9,2 9,1 9,2 9,1 9,0 8,9 8,9 0,7 0,7 0,7 0,6 0,6 0,7 0,6 0,6
F CONSTRUCTION 30,3 28,3 28,0 27,6 26,6 25,3 24,9 22,8 7,7 7,0 6,4 6,2 6,0 6,0 6,4 6,4
G TRADE 27,7 26,3 26,1 26,0 26,3 26,4 26,2 26,8 15,4 15,1 14,6 14,5 14,7 14,9 14,8 14,8
H TRANSPORTATION 20,4 19,4 19,3 18,8 19,0 18,9 18,2 18,0 5,3 5,2 5,0 4,8 4,9 4,9 4,7 4,7
I HORECA 66,9 65,9 67,2 66,9 67,0 69,4 69,5 65,8 21,6 22,3 24,4 24,8 25,3 24,2 24,2 24,2
J INFORMATION 15,8 13,8 13,9 14,8 15,1 14,1 15,9 15,8 1,9 1,7 1,7 1,8 1,8 1,8 2,1 2,1
K FINANCE 6,5 4,9 4,7 4,9 4,7 4,9 5,2 5,9 0,8 0,6 0,5 0,5 0,5 0,5 0,6 0,6
L,M PROFESSIONAL 28,1 24,7 24,3 24,4 23,8 22,8 23,7 24,0 4,3 4,1 3,9 4,0 3,9 3,9 4,2 4,2
N SUPPORT SERVICES 53,8 53,2 52,9 51,8 51,5 53,0 51,0 49,4 17,7 18,4 18,9 18,9 18,5 19,1 19,1 19,1
P EDUCATION 58,6 55,6 54,7 54,0 53,6 54,1 54,2 52,8 1,3 1,3 1,2 1,2 1,2 1,3 1,3 1,3
Q HUMAN HEALTH 37,9 38,7 37,1 37,0 37,2 37,9 37,5 37,8 5,7 6,2 5,8 5,9 6,0 6,4 6,3 6,3
R RECREATION 64,7 62,8 64,7 65,4 66,4 64,7 65,5 65,6 2,5 2,5 2,7 2,8 2,8 2,5 2,6 2,6
S OTHER SERVICES 56,8 56,2 56,4 56,9 57,3 57,4 56,1 55,9 3,8 3,9 3,9 4,0 4,0 4,0 3,8 3,8
LOW HOURLY EARNINGS
TOTALE 9,4 9,6 11,3 11,9 11,5 10,9 10,5 9,3 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100
C MANUFACTURING 5,3 5,4 6,2 6,4 5,6 5,6 5,2 4,1 14,3 14,0 13,2 12,6 11,4 12,1 11,5 11,5
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 2,3 2,5 3,2 3,6 3,3 3,1 2,9 2,4 0,6 0,6 0,6 0,6 0,6 0,6 0,6 0,6
F CONSTRUCTION 5,6 6,3 7,6 8,2 7,8 8,1 7,1 5,1 4,6 4,8 4,6 4,7 4,6 5,3 5,1 5,1
G TRADE 4,0 4,0 4,6 4,9 4,8 4,9 4,9 4,5 7,2 7,0 6,9 6,8 7,1 7,5 7,8 7,8
H TRANSPORTATION 8,7 8,7 9,3 9,3 8,8 8,0 7,6 6,5 7,3 7,1 6,4 6,0 5,9 5,7 5,5 5,5
I HORECA 14,6 14,3 18,5 18,9 18,5 16,5 16,1 15,3 15,2 14,9 17,9 17,7 18,2 15,8 15,8 15,8
J INFORMATION 3,0 3,0 3,5 4,0 4,0 3,5 3,9 3,5 1,2 1,1 1,1 1,2 1,3 1,2 1,4 1,4
K FINANCE 1,3 1,3 1,4 1,5 1,5 1,5 1,6 1,5 0,5 0,5 0,4 0,4 0,4 0,4 0,5 0,5
L,M PROFESSIONAL 8,1 7,1 8,0 8,7 8,7 7,7 7,7 7,1 4,0 3,6 3,4 3,6 3,8 3,6 3,8 3,8
N SUPPORT SERVICES 25,1 25,9 28,6 30,5 30,0 30,3 28,4 24,8 26,7 27,6 27,3 28,1 28,2 29,9 30,0 30,0
P EDUCATION 11,8 12,4 14,0 14,5 14,3 14,6 15,9 12,7 0,8 0,9 0,8 0,8 0,8 0,9 1,1 1,1
Q HUMAN HEALTH 8,6 8,9 11,7 13,0 11,6 8,6 8,3 7,1 4,1 4,4 4,9 5,2 4,9 4,0 3,9 3,9
R RECREATION 16,7 17,0 20,5 21,6 22,2 21,4 22,5 22,1 2,1 2,1 2,3 2,3 2,5 2,3 2,5 2,5
S OTHER SERVICES 52,7 52,9 54,8 56,3 55,8 56,0 55,7 52,6 11,5 11,4 10,0 9,9 10,3 10,6 10,5 10,5
Incidence on total employees Distribution
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 15-64 y rs. in the resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises in eah y ear. (b) 2022 data are
prov isional, since Business register data are referred to 2021
Nace code and description (section and two-digit) Total
with low
annual
earnings Nace code and description (section and two-digit) Total
with low
hourly
earnings
R 93 RECREATION Recreation and sports 74,7 0,7 1,9 S 96 OTHER SERVICES Other personal services 58,3 1,9 10,3
I 56 HORECA Food and beverage 69,5 8,1 19,0 N 80 SUPPORT SERVICES Security and investigation 56,4 0,6 3,4
I 55 HORECA Accommodation 69,3 2,2 5,2 N 81 SUPPORT SERVICES Services to buildings and landscape 41,5 3,5 13,7
N 81 SUPPORT SERVICES Services to buildings and landscape 61,2 3,5 7,2 R 93 RECREATION Sports, amusement and recreation 28,6 0,7 2,0
S 96 OTHER SERVICES Other personal services 57,7 1,9 3,6 M 73 PROFESSIONAL Advertising and market research 27,2 0,5 1,2
P 85 EDUCATION Education 54,2 0,7 1,3 N 82 SUPPORT SERVICES Office and business support 22,2 2,0 4,1
N 78 SUPPORT SERVICES Employment 53,1 4,5 8,0 C 14 MANUFACTURING Manufacture of wearing apparel 20,8 1,1 2,2
Q 88 HUMAN HEALTH Social work without accommodation 49,7 1,5 2,5 N 78 SUPPORT SERVICES Employment 19,5 4,5 8,3
N 82 SUPPORT SERVICES Office and business support 39,7 2,0 2,6 I 56 HORECA Food and beverage service 16,9 8,1 13,0
L 68 REAL ESTATE Real estate 38,8 0,7 0,9 P 85 EDUCATION Education 15,9 0,7 1,1
Q 87 HUMAN HEALTH Residential care 38,3 1,4 1,8 C 15 MANUFACTURING Manufacture of leather 14,2 0,9 1,2
M 73 PROFESSIONAL Advertising and market research 38,1 0,5 0,6 I 55 HORECA Accommodation 13,0 2,2 2,8
N 80 SUPPORT SERVICES Security and investigation 33,3 0,6 0,7 Q 88 HUMAN HEALTH Social work without accommodation 12,5 1,5 1,8
G 47 TRADE Other retail sale in specialised stores 32,6 9,2 10,1 H 52 TRANSPORTATION Support for transportation 12,1 2,8 3,3
C 14 MANUFACTURING Manufacture of wearing apparel 30,5 1,1 1,1 Q 87 HUMAN HEALTH Residential care 9,8 1,4 1,3
C 10 MANUFACTURING Manufacture of food products 28,4 2,6 2,5 L 68 REAL ESTATE Real estate 9,7 0,7 0,6
Q 86 HUMAN HEALTH Human health 28,2 2,1 2,0 G 45 TRADE Trade and repair of motor vehicles 9,7 1,8 1,6
F 41 CONSTRUCTION Construction of buildings 27,8 2,2 2,0 F 43 CONSTRUCTION Specialised construction 9,5 4,7 4,3
F 43 CONSTRUCTION Specialised construction 25,5 4,7 4,1 C 13 MANUFACTURING Manufacture of textiles 9,0 0,7 0,6
M 69 PROFESSIONAL Legal and accounting activities 24,1 1,3 1,0 M 74 PROFESSIONAL Other professional, technical etc. 8,4 0,6 0,5
Total 20 with highest incidence below the threshold (b) 45,1 51,4 78,0 Total 20 with highest incidence below the threshold (b) 29,3 40,9 77,3
Rest of Nace 13,4 48,6 22,0 Rest of Nace -56,1 59,1 22,7
TOTAL 29,7 100 100 TOTAL 10,5 100 100
Share on total
employees (a)%
Employess
below the
threshold
Two-digit Nace with the highest incidence of employees with low gross earnings, by type of threshold. Year 2021
LOW ANNUAL GROSS EARNINGS LOW HOURLY GROSS EARNINGS
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Share on total
employees (a)%
Employess
below the
threshold
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 15-64 y rs. in the resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises in eah y ear. (b) Only Nace tw o-digit w ith at least 50 thousands employ eees
41
experiencing low annual earnings in the years before. In this section we try to answer few questions: how did
they get this result? Did they remain in the same enterprise? Or did they change employer in the same sector?
Or, more drastically, did they change economic activity?
If we look at the distribution of these workers across NACE sections we observe that more than 70% of those
employees improved its conditions by changing employer between 2015 and 2022 (Table 3.6)33. By
considering the characteristics of the employer at the beginning and at the end of the period, we see that this
sub-population of employees moved towards sectors (such as industry, finance, transportation, human health,
information generally characterized by higher annual gross earnings), and they moved from low earnings
activities, like Horeca, support services and recreation where only less than 20% of 2015 employees succeeded
to overcome the low earnings threshold. In Manufacturing, for instance, one third of employees remained with
the same employer and more than 70% remained in the same NACE: something similar happened to those that
in 2015 were employed in finance, or trade, transportation and human health. The case of construction is partly
different: most employees changed employer remaining in the same sector.
Interesting details can also be observed considering the characteristics of the employer (Table 3.8). Here the
change of employer regarded mostly employees that left micro-enterprises for larger businesses, in particular
for medium enterprises. The change took place even for those who stayed with a same employer in all the
previous years: changing employer was often associated with higher YGE or implied a shift towards more
structured businesses (joint stock companies), away from individual firms and other partnerships.
The escape from low pay sectors is thus generally the only winning strategy from low earnings, since sectors
where there are more opportunities to improve general pay conditions are few.
The origin-destination flows of who improved their conditions by changing NACE put in evidence frequent
transitions to Manufacturing from support services, construction, trade and Horeca (Table 3.7). Also frequent
are the transitions towards the rest of business services especially from manufacturing, and again construction,
trade and Horeca.
Table 3.6
33 The fact that more than 40% had more than two employers in the period witnesses the mobility of these individuals.
Cohoort of persistent 2015-2022 employees over the threshold of low earnings from 2019, by events of change of enterprise and Nace, and year
Nace 2015 2021 % change N incid.% N incid.% N incid.% N incid.%
C MANUFACTURING 140.095 203.895 45,5 101.233 72,3 46.013 32,8 55.220 39,4 38.862 27,7
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 10.324 17.454 69,1 6.491 62,9 3.858 37,4 2.633 25,5 3.833 37,1
F CONSTRUCTION 84.585 79.713 -5,8 55.700 65,9 16.956 20,0 38.744 45,8 28.885 34,1
G TRADE 159.596 173.887 9,0 111.146 69,6 54.161 33,9 56.985 35,7 48.450 30,4
H TRANSPORTATION 71.487 84.543 18,3 47.809 66,9 19.688 27,5 28.121 39,3 23.678 33,1
I HORECA 105.043 62.424 -40,6 50.675 48,2 19.934 19,0 30.741 29,3 54.368 51,8
J INFORMATION 27.939 31.211 11,7 17.529 62,7 8.720 31,2 8.809 31,5 10.410 37,3
K FINANCE 13.561 18.178 34,0 11.156 82,3 8.172 60,3 2.984 22,0 2.405 17,7
L,M PROFESSIONAL 43.776 45.577 4,1 23.298 53,2 14.287 32,6 9.011 20,6 20.478 46,8
N SUPPORT SERVICES 145.610 87.391 -40,0 47.579 32,7 16.362 11,2 31.217 21,4 98.031 67,3
P EDUCATION 5.669 5.847 3,1 3.784 66,7 2.959 52,2 825 14,6 1.885 33,3
Q HUMAN HEALTH 38.682 44.944 16,2 32.524 84,1 18.267 47,2 14.257 36,9 6.158 15,9
R RECREATION 11.240 6.103 -45,7 3.647 32,4 2.210 19,7 1.437 12,8 7.593 67,6
S OTHER SERVICES 20.240 16.680 -17,6 11.444 56,5 6.370 31,5 5.074 25,1 8.796 43,5
Total 877.847 877.847 0,0 524.015 59,7 237.957 27,1 286.058 32,6 353.832 40,3
Change Nace
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 15-64 y rs. in the resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises persistently in the y ears 2015-2022.
Number of employees
Same Nace
Total Same enterprise Change enterprise
42
Table 3.7
Table 3.8
3.6. Enterprises and the employees in trap of low earnings
Turning the attention to the complementary cohort of persistent workers who could never escape the low
earnings trap, we see that they amount to 1.4 million, have a higher propensity to remain in the original sector
and are more tied to the same employer over time (Table 3.9 vs. Table 3.6). When they moved to other sectors,
they did it towards business and personal services sectors, included the weakest ones with respect to the level
of YGE. Horeca and recreation were the activities progressively abandoned, in this case by more than 10% of
those employees34.
34 Pandemics might have had a role in this unfavorable dynamics.
Nace 2015 Total
Other industry
(B,C,D,E) Construction (F)
Trade & Horeca
(G, I)
Communication &
Finance (J,K)
Other business
services
(H,L,M,N)
Other personal
services (P,S)
C MANUFACTURING 38.862 3,6 14,4 32,0 4,0 41,3 4,6
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 3.833 22,6 17,0 13,6 2,6 40,7 3,4
F CONSTRUCTION 28.885 44,4 15,2 2,7 34,6 3,0
G TRADE 48.450 37,4 6,8 5,2 9,1 34,4 7,1
H TRANSPORTATION 23.678 33,1 9,0 23,6 2,9 27,5 3,9
I HORECA 54.368 27,8 5,3 27,0 3,9 27,8 8,1
J INFORMATION 10.410 21,1 4,3 20,5 6,4 41,2 6,6
K FINANCE 2.405 17,3 3,7 21,0 11,1 40,7 6,1
L,M PROFESSIONAL 20.478 26,3 6,8 23,5 18,3 18,4 6,8
N SUPPORT SERVICES 98.031 44,9 6,4 21,1 5,1 16,7 5,8
P EDUCATION 1.885 15,3 2,7 17,8 10,7 30,1 23,4
Q HUMAN HEALTH 6.158 20,2 3,8 22,5 4,7 36,3 12,5
R RECREATION 7.593 22,3 6,6 30,6 6,3 26,6 7,7
S OTHER SERVICES 8.796 25,1 5,5 24,0 5,1 30,3 10,0
Total 353.832 32,1 6,8 21,1 5,9 27,9 6,3
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 15-64 y rs. in the resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises persistently in the y ears 2015-2022.
Only employ ees abov e the threshold after 2019, and formerly below the threshold betw een 2015 and 2018.
Nace 2021
Cohoort of persistent 2015-2022 employees over the threshold of low earnings from 2019 who changed their Nace, by Nace 2015 and Nace 2021
2015 2021 % ch. 2015 2021 % ch. 2015 2021 % ch.
BUSINESS SIZE
Micro (<10 pers.employed) 340.177 220.200 -35,3 97.175 82.320 -15,3 243.002 137.880 -43,3
Small (10-49 pers.employed) 210.222 246.616 17,3 55.180 62.615 13,5 155.042 184.001 18,7
Medium (50-249 pers.employed) 113.914 168.291 47,7 29.695 33.532 12,9 84.219 134.759 60,0
Large (>250 pers.employed) 213.534 242.740 13,7 55.907 59.490 6,4 157.627 183.250 16,3
Total 877.847 877.847 0,0 237.957 237.957 0,0 639.890 639.890 0,0
GOVERNANCE
Individual firms 115.251 67.187 -41,7 28.578 28.578 0,0 86.673 38.609 -55,5
Other partnerships 100.543 78.689 -21,7 30.700 30.700 0,0 69.843 47.989 -31,3
Joint-stock companies 559.698 651.432 16,4 153.547 153.547 0,0 406.151 497.885 22,6
Other companies 102.355 80.539 -21,3 25.132 25.132 0,0 77.223 55.407 -28,3
Total 877.847 877.847 0,0 237.957 237.957 0,0 639.890 639.890 0,0
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 15-64 y rs. in the resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises
persistently in the y ears 2015-2022. Only employ ees abov e the threshold after 2019, and formerly below the threshold betw een 2015 and 2018.
Cohoort of persistent 2015-2022 employees who passed over the threshold of low gross annual earnings from 2019, by
business size, type of governance and year. Years 2015 and 2021
Total employees With the same employer Who changed employer
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
43
Compared to those who overcame low wages, these employees were generally more involved with micro-
enterprises and with individual firms in 2015: in that year, a larger portion worked for Horeca enterprises. On
average, they come from enterprises where earning levels were worse. Changes of employer, when they
occurred, were prevalently addressed toward large-scale businesses and towards joint stock companies, while
the flow towards medium sized businesses was quite shallow. These evidences suggest a certain difficulty to
move across sectors and some difficulties in escaping low pay also when moving to large services enterprises,
especially when (as we saw in Part 2) part-time and fixed term jobs tend to prevail.
Table 3.9
Table 3.10
Concluding remarks
The analysis carried out in this paper uses for the first time a relatively large 2015-2022 longitudinal dataset
deriving from the integration of ISTAT's statistical registers on population, incomes and businesses. It delivers
a rather critical picture of the wage conditions of more than 20 million of Italian employees distributed in four
economic sectors: public sector, private (industry and services), agriculture and domestic workers. The study
concerns both the levels and the dynamics of labour incomes. The most critical issues regard domestic and
Nace 2015 2021 % change N incid.% N incid.% N incid.% N incid.%
C MANUFACTURING 195.802 189.437 -3,3 134.894 68,9 71.037 36,3 63.857 32,6 60.908 31,1
B,D,E REST OF INDUSTRY 9.716 12.216 25,7 5.350 55,1 3.179 32,7 2.171 22,3 4.366 44,9
F CONSTRUCTION 76.837 82.517 7,4 52.892 68,8 16.166 21,0 36.726 47,8 23.945 31,2
G TRADE 236.838 233.713 -1,3 168.590 71,2 85.513 36,1 83.077 35,1 68.248 28,8
H TRANSPORTATION 76.643 83.668 9,2 47.132 61,5 16.304 21,3 30.828 40,2 29.511 38,5
I HORECA 312.660 272.798 -12,7 222.399 71,1 80.396 25,7 142.003 45,4 90.261 28,9
J INFORMATION 21.906 23.280 6,3 12.806 58,5 7.454 34,0 5.352 24,4 9.100 41,5
K FINANCE 11.233 12.221 8,8 9.003 80,1 5.991 53,3 3.012 26,8 2.230 19,9
L,M PROFESSIONAL 57.475 64.129 11,6 38.186 66,4 24.969 43,4 13.217 23,0 19.289 33,6
N SUPPORT SERVICES 227.672 247.015 8,5 150.236 66,0 46.833 20,6 103.403 45,4 77.436 34,0
P EDUCATION 8.927 10.320 15,6 6.677 74,8 5.066 56,7 1.611 18,0 2.250 25,2
Q HUMAN HEALTH 87.003 98.999 13,8 74.431 85,5 43.638 50,2 30.793 35,4 12.572 14,5
R RECREATION 25.782 21.718 -15,8 12.820 49,7 7.331 28,4 5.489 21,3 12.962 50,3
S OTHER SERVICES 56.843 53.306 -6,2 41.016 72,2 23.964 42,2 17.052 30,0 15.827 27,8
Total 1.405.337 1.405.337 0,0 976.432 69,5 437.841 31,2 538.591 38,3 428.905 30,5
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 25-60 y rs. in 2022 resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises persistently in the y ears 2015-2022.
Cohoort of persistent 2015-2022 employees never permanently above the threshold of low earnings, by events of change of enterprise and Nace, and year
Number of employees
Same Nace
Change NaceTotal Same enterprise Change enterprise
2015 2021 % ch. 2015 2021 % ch. 2015 2021 % ch.
BUSINESS SIZE
Micro (<10 pers.employed) 606.265 548.785 -9,5 220.452 213.245 -3,3 385.813 335.540 -13,0
Small (10-49 pers.employed) 331.511 331.714 0,1 89.364 92.522 3,5 242.147 239.192 -1,2
Medium (50-249 pers.employed) 178.013 180.462 1,4 45.924 45.679 -0,5 132.089 134.783 2,0
Large (>250 pers.employed) 289.548 344.376 18,9 82.101 86.395 5,2 207.447 257.981 24,4
Total 1.405.337 1.405.337 0,0 437.841 437.841 0,0 967.496 967.496 0,0
GOVERNANCE
Individual firms 261.634 224.439 -14,2 99.818 99.818 0,0 161.816 124.621 -23,0
Other partnerships 206.237 177.851 -13,8 77.554 77.554 0,0 128.683 100.297 -22,1
Joint-stock companies 744.848 827.439 11,1 203.559 203.559 0,0 541.289 623.880 15,3
Other companies 192.618 175.608 -8,8 56.910 56.910 0,0 135.708 118.698 -12,5
Total 1.405.337 1.405.337 0,0 437.841 437.841 0,0 967.496 967.496 0,0
Cohoort of persistent 2015-2022 employees never permanently above the threshold of low earnings, by business size,
type of governance and year. Years 2015 and 2021
Total employees With the same employer Who changed employer
Sources: Istat, Business register 2015-2021, Income register (2015-2022), Population register (2015-2022)
Notes: (a) Indiv iduals aged 25-60 y rs. in 2022 resident population (only residents in household, ex cludind those in retirement and entrepreneurs), in the pay -roll of enterprises
persistently in the y ears 2015-2022. Only employ ees abov e the threshold after 2019, and formerly below the threshold betw een 2015 and 2018.
44
agricultural work: in these sectors more than 70 percent of employees have yearly labor incomes of less than
10,000 euros. These activities are notoriously characterized by a high incidence of non-regular or "grey"
employment that emphasize the effects of low wages. They are also sectors where public intervention plays a
prominent role in supporting employees' income indirectly by financing their employers with fiscal incentives,
a further element helping to explain the low level of wages.
More varied is the picture emerging from the analysis of the largest segment of employees relating to the non-
agricultural private sector. In this case, given also the size of the activities (we talk about 15 million
individuals), some specializations related to low-wage workers can be identified. Some service sectors
evidently generate poorly paid labor: this is the case, for instance, in accommodation and food service activities
and personal services, where median incomes are just over 10 thousand euros. Nevertheless, there are other
business services activities that offer rather poor wages, such as temporary employment agencies, cleaning and
security services where the presence of intense outsourcing commissioned by medium and large economic
units amplifies the spread of low paid work. The seven NACE divisions with the highest rate of low-earners
(recreation and sports, food and beverage, accommodation, services to buildings, personal services, education,
and employment and recruiting agencies) explain more than a half of total employees below the threshold of
yearly gross earnings. Industry is more rarely involved in low earnings, although food and textile industries
are - like construction - more risky with their relatively higher rate of low-wage earners.
More generally, the economic activities where yearly gross earnings are lower are also those where hourly
gross earnings are lower. Although an adequate level in hourly earnings is a necessary condition to have decent
yearly earnings, we argue that poor work remains essentially a problem of low incomes from work: duration
and intensity of labour contract is often insufficient to sustain individual earnings. Low income of employees
depends on the quality of their jobs. When quality is scarce, and contracts are short-termed or with a low
intensity, for a large part of employees low-earnings become a sort of a trap, a sort of a swamp from which it
is difficult to get out. The exit from the low-earning condition is most of the times the only escape from the
enterprises and the economic activities that offer low quality jobs. Job quality, though, is also an issue relating
the quality of the employer: for people who succeed to escape the low-earnings trap it is often fundamental to
work in enterprises that grows in size and performance.
Given this picture, we think that further steps of this research could be dedicated to a large amount of subjects.
We highlight just a few of them. On the one hand, the role of the employer in the employees earnings dynamics
needs to be more exploited: the evolution of its profit & loss accounts, the characteristics of its workforce, the
distribution of earnings among employees , the type of reference market (local or foreign). On the other hand,
some light must be shed over the interactions between low-earnings and the Government support to individual
incomes: the short but meaningful and troubled story of these measures in Italy interacts with the events in the
labour market for a large set of employees. We already know what comes from the most critical service sectors
but a deeper exploitation of the longitudinal information delivered by the statistical registers can really support
a better knowledge of these welfare policy issues. Finally, geographic aspects of the issues need to be revealed
by placing on the territory low-wage earners and their employers.
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