Despite the late expansionary monetary policies of Frankfurt, the horse does not drink. Or maybe it cannot access the pond.
The Italian GDP per capita is at its 10 year lowest (25 256 euro), and above all, Italy is divided in two. Split.
People in the Northwest produce over €30 000 (30 821), overtaking the South by a lap, stuck at 16,761 Euros. It is the most eye-catching number of “Noi” (We) the official report released by Istat, the National Institute of Statistics. Also the collection of data on labor is striking, in line with the negative data of the gross domestic product per capita: 55.1 people of non-working age for each 100 of working age – and these numbers keep going up – and in the age group between 24 and 64, four out of ten people do not have jobs. With a significant imbalance to the detriment of women (70.6% men are employed, vs. 50.6% of women), and with a clear geographical divide between employment in the center-north and in the south.
Relative poverty affects about 10% of households, and absolute poverty hits another 5.7%.
In 2014, the severe material deprivation indicator, an indicator of economic difficulties, marks a small decrease (from 12.3 to 11.6%), but it affects as many as 7 million people, four of them in the southern regions.
Certainly not by chance, the incidence of precarious work in 2015 rose to 14% and it is highest in the South (18.4%) than in the center north (12.5%). As to the part-time employees (18.5%), it is going up. While investments remain stuck at a low 17%.
Yet another confirmation of a very difficult situation comes from the indicators of power consumption, an indicator of manufacturing output. In 2014, electricity consumption fell 3% compared to 2013, as production decreased (-4.3%).
Energy consumption is at its lowest level in the last 12 years, the now distant 2004.
One small consolation is that 31.3% of energy consumption was generated from renewable sources, Italy exceeds the EU average (25.4%).
Within the EU, Italy is the fourth most populous country, with 60 million and 656 thousand residents, after Germany, France and the United Kingdom. But in the job classification, the unemployment rate of 11.7% – that does not include those who occasionally works with vouchers and the like – remains high. In the EU, only Greece, Croatia and Spain have employment rates lower than the 56.4% Italian one. Moreover, 58.1% of unemployed have been looking for work for over a year.
Needless to say, disillusionment reigns, especially among young people.
If Mario Draghi speaks of the high risk of a lost generation, Istat figures tell that 25.7% of Italians between 15 and 29 years of age do not study and do not work. The incidence is slightly higher among women (27.1%), and much more marked in the South: in Sicily and Calabria, it is close to 40%.
It is not comforting to see that, compared to 2014, the so-called Neet declined slightly, since the rate was 26.5%. However, this is the first decline since 2008.
The photograph Istat takes also notes a steady decline in the average number of children per woman.
In 2014 it stood at 1.37, compared to the necessary 2.1 to ensure generational replacement. Fortunately, there are the immigrants: at the beginning of 2015, more than 5 million have been registered (1.9% more than in 2014), representing 8.2% of total residents.
And they have a lower average education level than Italians: in the age range between 15 and 64, nearly half of the foreigners have a middle school school diploma, 40.1% have a high school diploma, and 10.1% have a college degree (while 15.5% of Italians have completed a college degree).
Last bad news: for the first time in the last 10 years, in 2015, life expectancy is set back by 0.2 points for men (80.1) and 0.3 for women (84.7). In the South, as usual, we are below the national average.
The crime statistics indicate that the number of murders and robberies have been in decline for some time, while the incidence of theft increased slightly. Yet in 2015, 41.1% of the families have a high perceived risk of crime, compared to 30% in 2014, resuming the growth trend interrupted only in the previous year.
