Higher wages for increasingly poor workers. What may seem like a paradox is none other than the fate of Italians, crushed in the last five years by galloping inflation, growing so dizzyingly that it has distanced the modest contemporary increase in wages.
The latest adjustment recorded to Italians' paychecks reached an average of +2.3% in 2024. Yet according to the World Real Wages Report published by the ILO (International Labor Organization), over the last 17 years the purchasing power of Italian families has fallen by 8.7%. The worst result obtained by the G20 countries, or the twenty most industrialized states in the world.
Considering the same period since 2008, the wealth of Germans has grown by 15% and that of our French cousins by 5%.
In Italy, however, we cry: a car now costs an average of 30 thousand euros and to pay off a mortgage 27 years of very high installments are not enough. Crazy prices to face with the same salaries as at the beginning of the millennium.
A problem to be addressed by renewing contracts, say the unions, and increasing productivity, according to economists.
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