Rome, 3 January 2023 – 504 thousand are the workers requested by companies in January and 1.3 million for the first quarter of the year. 46 thousand more hires than in January
2022 (+10.1%) and +149 thousand hires (+12.9%) taking the entire quarter as a reference. Expected labour demand at the beginning of the year is above pre-Covid levels and is +14.0% (+62
thousand hires) compared to January 2019. Leading the demand for labour is manufacturing with a year-on-year increase of 17.8% (+19 thousand hires). Followed by tourism (+10 thousand; +21.0%),
operational business and personal support services (+7 thousand; +17.7%) and personal services (+7 thousand; +12.9%). The difficulty in finding jobs rose to 46.5% (+7 percentage points compared
to a year ago), reaching 66% for managerial figures and close to 62% for specialised workers. Outlining this scenario is the Bulletin of the Excelsior Information System, produced by
Unioncamere and Anpal .
In January, industry is planning to hire 174 thousand people. Construction companies are looking for personnel (51 thousand entries), followed by mechatronics companies with 34 thousand entries
and metal and metal products companies planning 27 thousand entries. The services sector expects to hire 330 thousand workers: offering the greatest job opportunities are services to people,
which are looking for 64 thousand profiles, followed by trade (60 thousand) and tourism (58 thousand).
The mismatch between labour demand and supply is on the rise, rising from 38.6 per cent last year to 45.6 per cent (equivalent to about 230,000 recruitments). Lack of candidates is the
reason most cited by companies (27.8%), followed by inadequate preparation (13.5%) and other reasons (4.3%). According to the Job Market, executives (66.1%), specialised workers (61.9%),
technicians (51.6%), plant operators (49.0%), intellectual, scientific and highly specialised professions (47.5%), and qualified professions in trade and services (41.0%) are the most difficult
to find. More than four months (4.3) is the average search time needed to fill vacancies assessed by companies as difficult to find.
There are 153 thousand planned recruitments aimed preferentially at young people under the age of 30, with an average recruitment difficulty of 48%. Approximately 20% of personnel searches
are aimed at university graduates (96 thousand) and 30% at high school graduates (150 thousand). For 18.1% of recruitments (more than 91 thousand) companies plan to turn to immigrant workers,
especially in the logistics, operational services and metallurgy sectors.
Fixed-term contracts are the most popular form of recruitment with 208 thousand units, 41.3% of the total. This is followed by permanent contracts (122 thousand units, 24.3%), temporary
contracts (74 thousand, 14.7%) and other non-employee contracts (44 thousand, 8.8%). Apprenticeships are proposed for 25 thousand hirings (5.0%), while collaboration contracts and other types of
employment contracts are indicated for 19 thousand hirings (3.7%) and 10 thousand hirings (2.1%) respectively.
At a territorial level, the North-West and North-East areas report the highest hiring forecasts (over 171 thousand and about 123 thousand respectively), followed by the regions of
the South (over 109 thousand) and the Centre (about 101 thousand). The regional hiring rankings see, in order, Lombardy (121 thousand), Veneto (51 thousand), Lazio (50 thousand), Emilia-Romagna
(49 thousand), Piedmont (37 thousand) and Campania (32 thousand).
