02 May 2024
caaf cgil modena, federconsumatori, survey, modena, incomes, employee income,
We have reached the 3rd report on employee income and pension in the province of Modena, elaborated on the data of the CGIL tax company, largely the first in the area for activities carried out. A photograph of the income of the people of Modena and Modenawhich this year doubles.
This part of the report is dedicated to employed work, while that relating to pensions will be presented in the coming weeks, with a significant innovation: together with the evolution of pensioners’ income we will present the condition of younger people with respect to waiting for pensions.
Our report analyzes data from tax returns from employed work presented during 2023 by the relative Modena residents to the year 2022; the historical series on which the data comparison is based refers to the period 2016-2022, and includes 291,000 unique certifications.
Only the term “collapse” can summarize what happened on the income front during 2022. It was an expected and announced fact, but the dimensions and weight of this collapse on employed work leave us astonished. A phenomenon that will continue, accentuating the worsening, when we measure the data of the declarations currently being presented. A decline in income, so to speak, which has no equal in the history of our country from the post-war period to today.
Let’s talk about a loss of purchasing power of wages which in the space of a single year, in the province of Modena, reached an average of 8.1% in the face of inflation that reached 8.3%. The almost total absence, on average in 2022, of salary increases is completely evident. In 2022 and 2023 we witnessed a heavy impoverishment of Modena and Italians; an impoverishment that has had no equal in Europe. At the same time, the growth in profits of companies in entire sectors must be noted, often co-responsible for inflation dynamics.
A shift from income to profits which is probably the largest social injustice operation of the last eighty years in our country. We are talking about a loss in the value of wages that reaches 12.3%, if we examine the data starting from 2016. In seven years, workers in our province have lost almost two salaries compared to their annual income.
Within this terrible data, negative for all employees, we once again point out the widening of income gaps. The incomes of young people and women worsen even more, with the most critical point among young women. Last year we recorded signs of a recovery in incomes, in the post-Covid period, albeit limited to qualified male employment in the over 55 age group.
The declarations presented in 2023 are missing even the slightest positive data.
The gender issue is accentuated. Women, more frequently than men, work on fixed-term contracts; if the average income of men is 21,550 euros, that of women stops at 15,626 euros, 27.5% less. Effect caused by the greater presence of women in poor, highly irregular sectors, and in those areas, such as trade and tourism, where the majority of contracts are part-time, largely involuntary. In 2022, women saw a decline in incomes greater than that of men, and if the comparison is pushed to 2016, women lost 14.2% of their income, compared to 10.2% of men. One last fact is enough; in declarations exceeding 50,000 euros only 16% are those produced by women.
The registry issue is accentuated. If in the manufacturing sector, with a greater male presence, those under 35 lost “only” 4.8% of their wages in the period 2016-2022, for those under 35 in the trade sector the figure rose to -16%, up to at -27% in the catering, hotel and public sector sectors; a large sector, with a strong presence of young people, but increasingly devastated by irregular work, in its many forms. Among those under 25, 65% are on fixed-term contracts, a figure that remains very high even in the 25-34 range, with 44%.
The territorial issue is accentuated. In the collapse of incomes in 2022, while waiting to measure 2023, the data for the city of Modena may be surprising, where the decline in the real value of incomes is very strong. A drop of almost 10%, partly caused by the general decline of the Tertiary sector, particularly present in the city. A figure that is very distant from an excessively optimistic narrative on the state of the capital, and a topic that does not seem to be at the center (but not even on the periphery) of the attention of the political forces involved in administrative and European electoral competition. The city of Modena is the capital of the province, but also of precarious and underpaid work, we must always remember this. After the good performance of the previous year, driven by the biomedical sector, the income of workers in the Northern Area also fell heavily (-9.4%). The Mirandola area thus returns to parity with the hilly-mountain area, while Carpi, which has long been characterized by the strong decline of the manufacturing economy, increasingly reduces the income differential with the two extreme areas of our province. Carpi too would need a realism about the state of the economy and incomes, overcoming the too frequent commemoration of the glories of the past. There are four areas of the province where, in addition to a drop in purchasing power, we have also recorded a drop in nominal incomes: in the order of greatest negativity, Mirandola, Modena, Carpi and Castelfranco Emilia are.
The crisis of Modena families is accentuated. One of our tables shows the effects of the decline in the purchasing power of income from work for some types of families. Once again the family under 35 with jobs in the tertiary sector has suffered a drop in the value of family income of around 20%, over seven years, while on the contrary the drop for the family of over 55, with jobs in institutions premises and in the ceramic sector recorded a more modest decline of 5%. A decline that for the weakest part of families has transformed into uncertainty about the future, a decline in birth rates, and precarious existences for too long. But also in choices to reduce consumption, including food consumption, in the renunciation of treatment, which is increasingly shifted to the private sector. Almost half of mortgages today have a duration of more than 30 years; you take out the mortgage at 30 years, you finish paying it at 60, or 65 years. Italians’ indebtedness is growing, savings are decreasing; above all, the border of poverty continues to advance, including families with double incomes, but too modest to support the higher costs of mortgages, rents, energy and food expenses.
In the end. The income crisis should be the prism through which to observe many other phenomena, first of all social distrust, which is growing unstoppably. On the contrary, it seems to be a topic removed from the political agenda, at most useful for applause, but ultimately relegated to the corner of impossible things. Or he takes refuge in disbelief: “It’s always sold out at the seaside anyway.” Instead, the income crisis exists, and produces effects, which are all negative. In the survey we highlight the progressive thinning of average incomes and the expansion of the weakest segment, and within this the creation of a further, even more critical area.
Italy is a country where over the years anger has transformed into resentment, class struggle into generalized mistrust; a country where the social elevator has been broken down for many years, where profits grow and income from work falls. Where taxes are taxed, as in the case of excise duties on fuel, but it is not possible to address the issue of the taxation of large assets and the unfair ultra-profits of banks, oil companies, energy managers and others. Topics on which interventions have been mentioned in the recent past, but also topics that have been completely eliminated by the action of the current Government. A Government which is also completely uninterested in the complex trade union action which between 2023 and 2024 “moved” the wages of some sectors and companies, renewing contracts and recovering part of the incomes lost in recent years. But an action which, on its own, cannot be enough to recover those two salaries lost on average by the people of Modena, in the space of a few years.
Marzio Govoni president of Federconsumatori province of Modena Aps
Elisabetta Valenti responsible for Caaf Cgil Modena
Modena, 2 May 2024
REPORT on employee income survey in the province of Modento (pdf)
