Time.news – After more than a year and a half since the start of the pandemic, in the first half of 2021 employment in our country has restarted but it is increasingly part time which is more often than not “involuntary”, that is, not required by the worker or by the worker for legal requirements, but proposed as a contractual condition of access to work by companies.
This is what emerges from the anticipation of the policy brief “A recovery … part-time” of the National Institute for Public Policy Analysis (Inapp), according to which in June of this year, of the 3,322,634 contracts activated overall (of of which 2,006,617 to men and 1,316,017 to women), over one million and 187 (35.7%) are part time.
The penalized women
According to INAP, gender differences are increasing: almost half of the new hires of women are part-time and for 4 out of 10 women reduced hours are associated with fixed-term or discontinuous contracts. Being a woman under 30 and living in the South continues to represent a further disadvantage.
INAP points out that 49.6% of new hires of women are part-time against 26.6% of men. And 42% of new women’s contracts also associate a fixed-term or discontinuous form of contract with the part-time hourly regime, weakness that affects only 22% of the new male occupation.
The female component – the study reads – represents a total of 39.6% of total activations, confirming the consolidated gender gap in employment. We are therefore witnessing a a lower number of new activations for women than for men in absolute terms, but with a much higher incidence of part time. This situation occurs in all types of contracts.
Of the total number of new contracts for women, they are part-time: 54.5% in open-ended contracts, 63.7% in fixed-term contracts, 44.5% in apprenticeships, 45.9% in seasonal work and 42 , 4%% in administration.
As regards the economic sectors, the new hires of women are lower in absolute value than those of men with the exception of the financial-insurance, real estate and public administration sectors, including extraterritorial organizations. In all cases, however, the share of part-time women is always greater than that of men.
Furthermore, in the case of agriculture, commerce, real estate, professional, artistic and public administration, education, health and assistance, part-time contracts constitute the prevalent form of work for women, exceeding the incidence of 50% of the total.
At a territorial level, in the central-northern regions that have activated the highest quotas of contracts for women, the “physiological” gender imbalance of part-time shown up to now is reproduced.
On the other hand, the link between the reduced number of activated contracts and a par-time percentage of around 70% stands out in the South, in particular with Sicily Calabria Molise, indicating a profound instability in the prospect of recovery.
Incentives are not enough
Part time and precariousness are not reduced by the presence of an incentive for hiring. The study shows that in the first half of 2021 there were a total of 780,128 hires with different types of subsidies, corresponding to 23.5% of the total hires.
Of the 291,548 subsidized hiring of women (corresponding to 22.2% of the total of all female hires), almost 60% were part time. Of the 488,580 facilitated hiring of men (equal to 24.3% of total male hiring) only 32.5% are part-time.
“Reading these data tells us that the recovery of employment in Italy risks not being structural because it is focusing too much on cost reduction through the reduction of hours worked” – explained Sebastiano Fadda, president of Inapp. “The ‘prudence of businesses’ – he continues – risks increasing the range of poor workers and the gap in participation and income existing between men and women.
Driving the Recovery and Resilience Plan should instead be an opportunity to push for the creation of stable jobs, because without the prospect of a gradual stabilization of employment relationships there is a risk of having negative effects on productivity and competitiveness “.
“In this scenario, the use of concessions to hiring has not led to a correction of the trend” – observed the president of INAP – and we continue to face the well-known gender imbalance, despite the presence of economic or contributory incentives. : lower female recruitment in absolute value and with a much higher incidence of part time than the male component “.
“It is necessary to start – concluded Fadda – a reflection on the ‘improved and selective role which, starting from this restart phase, should characterize the incentive system. this direction “.
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