Italy: Study examines migrants and employment in Puglia

Rome: According to a recent statistical study, migrants do jobs that require the lowest level of skills in the region of Puglia in southern Italy. But migrant-led firms are actually doing better than their Italian counterparts.

“According to the data on the labor force carried out by the [Italian national statistics institute] ISTAT, foreign nationals account for 4.4 percent of those employed out of 1,292,600 in the region of Puglia,” noted an annual statistical report on immigration in the region.

The report was published by the IDOS research center in collaboration with the University of Salento, where it was presented on May 5.

“With reference to the type of employment, there is a larger concentration of foreign nationals in the least qualified positions, as manual labor is carried out by almost half the foreign workers (47.6 percent compared with 11.6 percent of Italians), [present on the territory]” it added.

“Compared with the national average, in Puglia the level is 17.6 percent higher for foreigners and 3.5 percent higher for Italians.” Puglia is known for its agricultural produce and much of the region’s income is based on agriculture, fishing and tourism, all of which have a high demand for unskilled labor.

In Italy, skilled manual labor is carried out by 16.5 percent of foreign workers and by 25.7 percent of Italians. The study shows that, also in this case, the difference with the national average is significant, with 31.7 percent of foreign workers engaged in skilled manual labor.

Those employed as a manager or in intellectual and technical professions account for only 4 percent of foreign workers, compared with a national average that is almost double: 8.7 percent.

The figure for their Italian counterparts is 31.4 percent, compared with 38.6 percent at the national level.

The statistics also showed something of a success story for migrant-led business. On the issue of self-employment, as of the end of 2023 there were 22,146 firms managed by immigrants in Puglia, 5.8 percent of the total number of firms in the region. The firms are in general economically dynamic and growing more than their Italian counterparts, the study found.

The enterprises created by immigrants grew by 1.7 percent on the previous year and by 14.8 percent between 2018 and 2023.

In the same period, Italian firms dropped by 1.5 percent and one percent. In 76.3 percent of the cases, the firms were led by nationals of non-EU countries.

Women accounted for 26.3 percent of the owners, two percent more than the national average.

In the 2012-2013 school year, there were 16,329 students of foreign nationality registered at school in the Puglia region, equivalent to about 2.5 percent.

About a third of them had been born in Italy. Ten years later, in the 2022-2023 school year, students holding foreign nationality increased by about 4,000 to 20,330; over half of them –10,627 — had been born in Italy.