Italian-style Great Resignation

Are Italians quitters or not? What if the big resignation one is just a myth? It has been talked about for months in most advanced economies, but it is still not entirely clear how much and in what ways it is also occurring in the Italian labor market. “I understand that the idea of ‘I’m leaving because I can’t take it anymore, I’d rather stay without it’ may seem romantic and even noble,” but “unfortunately in Italy the data we have struggle to justify the emphasis,” Francesco Seghezzi, president of the Adapt Foundation, wrote recently. Indeed, while concepts such as “great resignation” and “yolo economy” have become the new post-Covid mantras in the United States, data in Italy struggle to substantiate this trend.

• Quitting is only half the story: the truths behind big resignations(The Guardian)

The data speak Those who leave their jobs in our country, in fact, would not seem to do so because of that romantic inclination to search for a new sense of living. According to Bank of Italy data, there were 777,000 voluntary terminations in permanent employment relationships in the first ten months of 2021, a jump of 40,000 from two years earlier. The increase in resignations also seems to involve young people newly hired in clerical jobs in the North. Data from an Aidp survey of a sample of about 600 companies showed that the sectors that remain most uncovered are IT and Digital, Production, Marketing and Sales. The age groups of 26 to 35 and 36 to 45 would be the most affected(Courier).

• Goodbye to the fixed place? No, what the Italian data say(HuffPost).

New employment According to experts, these are still too weak numbers, however, given the way the labor market has been “frozen” with the health emergency(Lavoce). Even in the United States, the “you only live once” narrative seems to have lost ground, with the data showing that it is the increased demand for jobs that has prompted many people to leave their jobs for a better place. As for our country, Bankitalia adds that workers who resigned did so only with the prospect of new employment. Of course, the growth is there and that is why it must be monitored, but rather than a great resignation, writes Linkiesta, one could speak of a great transition that took place at a time of labor market recovery, after so many months of immobility.

• An initial sketch of the great resignations in Italy(Lavoce).