This article is published in the number 24/25 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until June 21, 2022
It is almost a format: “Desperate entrepreneur X does not find workers: young people prefer to stay at home with the Citizenship Income”. We see it more and more in our social feeds for two reasons. First, the arrival of summer, a period in which advertisements for seasonal workers increase: 387,000 are needed between receptionists, cooks and waiters, but 40% are not to be found. Second, the announcement by the leader of Italia Viva Matteo Renzi that he wants to organize a referendum to abrogate the income: “It is uneducative”, he said, because it would make young people lazy and push them to refuse job offers, sure that they still have a monthly income from State. Which is the accusation shared by the center-right parties and the associations of entrepreneurs. Now, the discussion becomes delicate. To argue that Italian “young people” are all tireless workers would be as superficial an exercise as to say that they are all lazy. Among them – as among every category – there are humble and presumptuous, indefatigable and lazy, industrious and picky.
But perhaps laziness is not the primary cause of the youth unemployment rate in Italy at 24.5%. There is that the Income – by the admission of its own supporters – was a disaster in its second phase, the insertion of the unemployed into the labor market (but do you remember the “navigators”?). And that in Italy we are among the least good at putting job seekers in contact with those who offer it. It is the “skill mismatch”: a misalignment between the skills we learn at school and those that are required of us in the world of work. And there is that we are among the least good at looking for a job: many still do it through word of mouth.
And yes, Italian wages have dropped: -3% from 1990 to today, a unicum among Western countries. One of the objectives of the Income was also to “compete” with wages, and to encourage entrepreneurs to raise the economic offer for young people. But the mission failed: either because the Income does not mainly concern young people (the average age of the beneficiaries is around 36). This is because it involves a rather limited audience (20% of the unemployed) unable to alter the entire labor market on its own. And in short, many argue, if the citizen’s income with its 561 euros per month on average is really capable of competing with the wages offered by entrepreneurs, the problem is wages, not income. Because job sacrifice only makes sense if it is temporary and functional to a better future. Without the better future, it stops being sacrifice and becomes masochism. This is another reason why Europe is working on the directive on the minimum wage, a more direct measure. This is a minimum hourly figure under which a salary cannot go down. Germany recently raised it to 12 euros an hour. Italy – one of only six EU states where it is not in force – is starting to discuss it on the eve of a warm autumn.
We expect inflation, rising energy costs and over 2 million workers who will work at 6 euros net per hour outside any contractual protection. The best thing we can do is avoid generalizations, target abuses, improve the intersection of supply and demand, educate young people to seek employment effectively and companies to offer it with dignity. We will save a generation that risks getting lost in business. And maybe we will create more income (not citizenship).
Francesco Oggiano Digital journalist, author of the book SociAbility. He curates the weekly Digital Journalism newsletter.
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Source: Vanity Fair
