Youth enterprises in Italy: hope for the future

This entry is posted on number 28-29 of Vanity Fair on newsstands until July 15, 2025.

For some years now, speaking with Italian entrepreneurs, the first problem that emerges is the lack of workers, especially young people. In the same way, in every dinner with parents of teenagers, concern emerges for the choices of the children, lost among the calls of improbable masters and uncertain work perspectives.

Some recent studies confirm the sense of loss of entrepreneurs and parents. In the second oldest country in the world, young people are less and less: in the last 15 years Italy has lost almost a million young people between 18 and 34 years old, which mean less potential apprentices and less innovation. As for the prospects of work, the confusion of paths and expectations grows, between new needs and old prejudices about the “respectable” works, which favors the waste of an increasingly rare good.

From 2011 to 2023, 550 thousand young people between 18 and 34 years old, 42 thousand per year, mostly with medium-high education, have left Italy, attracted by better economic and career perspectives. Those who remain strong risk of falling into the Neet trap, young people who study or work, often due to wrong choices in the school, who have not allowed them to acquire those skills today fundamental for every job.

If the demand for companies has translated in the last three years into 462 thousand new hires of Under 35, dissatisfaction with working conditions is increasingly widespread. Low salaries and precarious contracts, combined with the different value that the millennials attribute to work, translate into a disaffection towards “the place”, with a strong tendency to change work very often, to do the bare minimum (quiet quetting), or add more jobs (polylavoro).

In this context, speaking today in Italy of companies, and in particular of youth enterprises, it does not only mean opening an extraordinary catalog for creativity and quality, but evoking very happy exceptions and concrete hope for the future.

In fact, if the latest data tell us that the number of youth enterprises is falling, and according to 80 percent of young entrepreneurs it is for the excessive weight of the bureaucracy and the absence of concrete supports, on the other hand it is here that the greatest growth opportunities are concentrated, not only for young people, but for Italy.

Companies who know how to keep together knowing how to make craftsmen, sustainability and digital have a great future in front, not only in terms of turnover, but also of personal satisfaction. Talking to a young entrepreneur today always means making an extraordinary bath of energy and enthusiasm, two ingredients that Italy has extraordinarily needs. Our productive biodiversity tells us that the opportunities for young people, perhaps dissatisfied with their work or looking for a project, are still many, that you want to give life to a new company, or relaunch one.

Perhaps, the answer to many anxieties of today could be inside a shop.

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