Less large, but younger and more qualified: this is the picture of the Venetian labor market that awaits us for the near future based on the demographic dynamics taking place in the region.
The second release of Opusthe new in-depth series edited byVeneto Work Observatory dedicated to the topic of demography, highlights how the progressive aging that has affected the working-age population in recent decades has led to profound transformations in the composition of the employment pool, with an ever-increasing presence of workers over the age of 55 among the employed and unemployed ( +60% in ten years).
The hiring of mature age workers also increased, going from 37 thousand in 2013 to over 94 thousand in 2023, often also with permanent contracts, and the employment rate relating to these workers: in 2022 every 10 residents of aged between 55 and 64, almost 6 are employed, while in the 65-74 age group the share of employed people grew from 6.9% in 2013 to 9.9% in 2022.
The increase in participation in the labor market is also linked to the lengthening of working careers and an increasingly delayed exit from the world of work: among those who remain unemployed after the age of 55, 50% find a new job within a year (they were 35% in 2013) and the percentage remains high even among those over 64 (over 30%).
But if the population aging process has had such important effects on the labor market, the progressive departure of the “children” of the baby boom, i.e. the generations born between 1959 and 1971, is destined to produce further transformations in the next decade, leaving room for the entry of new generations and resulting in a gradual decrease in the median age.
In addition to the contribution of the generations born after 2009 who will appear on the job market for the first time, the weight of workers born between the 1960s and 1970s, who were able to benefit from longer education courses compared to to their predecessors.
If other factors do not intervene, such as an increase in migratory flows, the pool of potential workers from which companies will be able to draw will therefore be smaller than today, but probably characterized by a higher average level of education, by a growth in skills, especially digital, and from a lower median age, opening up new challenges and new opportunities in terms of matching job supply and demand.
