Despite the freeze on layoffs, the lockdown and restrictions to contain the pandemic have made Italy lose € 39.3 billion in wages. The number equates to a decrease of 7.47%, the largest in the European Union, which records a decrease of 1.9% on average, reports Eurostat. In the tables on the main components of GDP, just updated by the Community Statistical Office, it emerges that in Italy there has been a rise in wages of 525.732 billion in 2019 to 486.459 billion in 2020.
During the same period in France 32 billion were lost, but on a wage bill that went from 930 to 898 billion with a decrease of 3.42%, while in Germany, the loss is reduced to just 13 billion out of over 1,500 (-0.87%). In the 27-year Union, the average decline in wages was 1.92%. The cause is to be found in the long periods of lockdown and in the restrictions due to the pandemic that have weighed on the occupation, but also in the massive use of layoffs.
The decline in the wage bill at current pricesi effectively eliminates the growth recorded in wages since 2015 with the decontribution on hiring introduced by the Renzi government, given that at the end of 2020 the salary was lower than the levels of 2016 (490.6 billion).
In the same period, the major EU countries experienced a smaller reduction. Some, like Holland, have even registered an increase in the wage bill at current prices (+ 3.29%). Spain suffered a decline comparable to the Italian one, with 28.37 billion less wages (- 6.44%), but with a greater decrease in employment. In 2020, the Iberian country lost almost 600,000 employees compared to 464,000 fewer in Italy (data that does not take into account the new calculation rules according to which those in Cig for over 3 months are not considered employed). The reduction in the Spanish employment rate was therefore 2.4 points (from 63.3% to 60.9%) compared to 0.9 points less in Italy (from 59% to 58.1%).
He contributed to thinking about the overall paycheck of Italian workers the collapse of forward contracts and the widespread use of social safety nets to cope with closures to contain infections.
In the year of the pandemic, wages are also falling employers’ social security contributions, which fell from 194.2 billion in 2019 to 184 in 2020, -5.24%. compared to an average reduction in eu social contributions, again at current prices of 1.37%.
In front of these numbers on the one hand, the union is asking for more public and private investments to relaunch quality work and raise wages to encourage growth and the recovery of demand and consumption (the CGIL); on the other it urges the extension of the freeze on redundancies for all beyond 30 June, in order not to worsen the situation (the CISL).