May 1st is not Labor Day for everyone, especially for self-employed workers whose total in 2022 has not yet reached the pre-Covid level.
This was underlined by Confartigianato Sardegna , rattling off the data relating to employment on the island, collected in a report entitled "Spring 2023: trends, changes and
uncertainties of Sardinia” and carried out on Istat data in the three-year period 2019-2022.
According to the dossier, there are 566,000 employed people in Sardinia, still 16,000 fewer (-2.7%) than the 582,000 in 2019, a result that places the island in penultimate place in the national ranking.
However, the last year taken into consideration (2021-2022) marks a recovery, with 3
thousand units more (+0.5%). Among the 5 Sardinian provinces, only 2 exceed the pre-crisis employment levels: Cagliari (+1.7%) and Nuoro (+0.5%); on the contrary, they still remain below the 2019 levels, performing worse than the regional average of South Sardinia (-3.2%), Oristano (-3.4%) and Sassari (-7.3%).
LITTLE TO CELEBRATE - «These data show that, unfortunately, and once again, May 1st in Sardinia cannot be the day of all workers - comments Maria Amelia Lai, President of Confartigianato Imprese Sardegna - the 16,000 women and men who have lost their jobs, can't find it, have had to close the company and can't find a new entrepreneurial path».
«The numbers also remind us how a slight recovery has been seen in the last 2 years - continues Lai - with public intervention, with state financial guarantees, the "Supports" and the "Refreshments", and with the Superbonus and the other bonuses that in the "home system" market, between direct and induced companies, affecting almost all the artisan activities, have created work and introduced a considerable amount of liquidity".
INDEPENDENT AND EMPLOYEES - In the process of recovering pre-pandemic employment, not yet concluded for our region, the component that has been most affected by the shock is that of self-employed workers. In 2022 there are 138,000 independents - entrepreneurs, freelancers, self-employed workers, etc. – equal to just under one out of 4 employees (24.3% of total employment), down from
to 2019 of 6 thousand units (-4.3%). At the provincial level, more substantial reductions, compared to 2019, were found for the independents of Oristano (-16.9%), Sassari (-14.4%) and South Sardinia (-4.5%).
On the contrary, positive recovery dynamics 2019-2022 are observed for Nuoro (+2.4%) and Cagliari (+14.1%). Compared to 2019, employees, who number 429,000 and represent 75.7% of total employment, fell by 10,000 units (-2.2%) compared to the national trend, placing our region penultimate in the ranking with the others 19 regions.
The dynamics of employee employment is determined by the stability of permanent employment (+0.2% on 2019) and by a significant drop in fixed-term contracts (-10.1%).
The island's labor market records a negative trend both in full-time employment (-1.9% on 2019) and, in particular, in part-time employment (-3.2%).
At the provincial level, more substantial reductions in the number of employees compared to the regional average are observed for the provinces of Sassari (-4.6%) and Southern Sardinia (-2.8%). Oristano stands out which, unlike the other provinces, presents a positive trend (+2.1%).
THE PNRR - «The delay in recovering pre-pandemic levels for self-employment - continues President Lai - confirms the criticality of the situation highlighted several times. Then there are strong social imbalances because so far we have also underestimated the consequences of the demographic crisis. We have both a low birth rate and low female employment which condition the recovery.
"As for the PNRR - concludes Lai - success will also depend on the ability to involve all the players in our productive fabric, starting from the artisans and small businesses".
(Unioneonline/lf)