Wage alarm in Italy, salaries not growing enough compared to prices
The annual report of the INPS brings to light alarming data that do not only concern the pensionsbut the purchasing power of ItaliansThe problem is related to the wagestoo low compared to prices. The increases given to workers are less than the surge in shopping cart costs. In a four-year period in which the price growth has been between 15 and 17 percent– reports Il Fatto Quotidiano – the wages of the employees are increased by just 6.8%: this is the real size of the loss of purchasing power suffered by Italians in the face of some timid advances in nominal wageswhich only began to outpace the cost of living at the end of 2023.
The increase in paychecks is largely insufficient to compensate for the inflationary flare-up started with the post-Covid and the war in Ukraine. The effects, as usual, are unfair: if we consider only food products, which particularly impact the basket of the lowest incomes, they have registered an increase of 25%. As for hourly wages, – continues Il Fatto – the average salary is 14.3 eurosbut we have 2.8 million employees who have a salary less than 9.50 euros gross (1,550 euros gross per month). However, this figure does not take into account agricultural and domestic workers, categories particularly exposed to poor work. About 140 thousand employees have salaries even less than 5.30 euros per hour but, if the bar is set at 8.50 euros, the group rises to 1.4 million, 10% of the total non-domestic and non-agricultural workers.
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