Wages, education, and human capital. Italy is falling behind the rest of the EU on key economic and social indicators . The result is a somewhat faded Tricolore.
At the top of the list of emergencies are wages. Italian wages are second-rate. This is demonstrated by figures from Eurostat , the statistical office of the European Union. The average for the 27 member states is €38,950 per year. Our country is in the €20,000 to €30,000 range .
Now, the fact that Luxembourg , with its 690,315 inhabitants and 125 licensed banks, has salaries of 88,000 euros is not indicative of anything; this is a case in itself. But Austria is at 73,000 euros, the Netherlands at 67,000, Germany at 64,000, France at 60,000. The decline has been dragging on, inexorably worsening, for the last twenty years: in 2004, Italy exceeded the EU average with a per capita GDP of 24,200 euros, compared to 21,300 euros in the rest of the Old Continent. Now, however, the same EU figure has reached 41,600 euros, compared to 39,900 in Italy. Translated into purchasing power, salaries from Aosta to Canicattì have collapsed. In 2022 alone, they lost 7.3 percent . A massive crisis, with a trend that dates back to the 1990s. Except that in thirty years, the decline had stalled at 2.9 percent. Lately, it's been a veritable collapse, especially since real wages continue to rise in most European economies.
Italy, again looking at the European Union as a whole, is among the last countries in terms of the number of university graduates : in the 25-34 age bracket, the one used to measure university completion, only 31.1 percent of young people have a diploma. The same figure in Europe is 45 percent. It's true that Italy has a high number of graduates who have not completed their studies: 44 percent versus the EU average of 32.5 percent. Compared to the European context, this allows us to nibble a few points, but not enough to close the enormous gap. Furthermore, Italy is characterized by a high rate of school dropouts : in the 18-25 age bracket , 8.2 percent of boys and girls don't even graduate, although this figure has improved in recent years.
There's nothing random about our country's cultural decline: even public spending on education in Italy is below the EU average. Italy allocates less than 4 percent of GDP to schools and universities, almost one percentage point less than the rest of the 27. In fact, our state invests more in a single high school student than in a single student enrolled in a national university. It's no surprise, then, that in 2024 alone, approximately 156,000 Italians decided to move abroad, a 36.5 percent increase over 2023. This compares with just 53,000 returning home, generating a severe negative balance between those under 34 and graduates. This represents a huge loss of human capital, which requires targeted policies.
The paradox is that Italy's attractiveness index has improved from 60.8 to 62.1 . This is according to the latest edition of the Ambrosetti GAI, which measures a country's appeal, or rather its ability to "create a favorable environment in which businesses, investments, talent, and skills choose to settle, grow, and remain," the document states. "These economic, institutional, infrastructural, social, and environmental factors, taken together, determine a region's competitiveness and its ability to generate development." Italy remains stable at 17th place in a ranking that sees the United States leading the way, with China and Singapore in second and third place. Germany is fourth, the United Kingdom fifth, and Japan sixth. The result is a stark gap between real life, with growing emigration, and the theoretical picture that emerges of the Bel Paese. A discrepancy that policymakers should address.