Modena, 3 May 2024 – Seven of us years it’s like having lost two salaries, four if we consider a married couple. A progressive decline which comes from 2016, but which in 2022 has transformed “into a collapse that has no equal in the history of our country from the post-war period to today”. And worse than all things went to women and young people.
It leaves no escape third survey on the income from employment of the people of Modena, the analysis developed by Federconsumatori and CGIL of the tax returns presented to the Caaf CGIL of the province of Modena between 2016 and 2022 (focus on the 2023 returns). To illustrate the dossier, among others, the statistical researcher Massimiliano Vigarani, statistical researcher, and Elisabetta Valenti, head of Caaf Cgil Modena. “We are talking – explains the president of Federconsumatori Marzio Govoni – of a loss in value that has reached 12.3% since 2016. Seven workers have lost almost two salaries compared to their annual income”.
The avalanche actual occurred in 2022, when the loss of purchasing power in a single year reached an average of 8.1 percent against an inflation that reached 8.3 percent, a surge in the prices of goods central to the people’s lives such as energy, fuel and shopping baskets. Result? “Debt is growingsavings are eroded, families are unable to pay bills, mortgages and rents, and there are those who increasingly give up medical care. An emergency that should enter the electoral agendas of the candidates in the elections as soon as possible.”
A consideration echoed by the provincial secretary of the CGIL Daniele Dieci: “The narrative of a rich province, immune to economic crises is wrong. Inequalities in our territory too are increasing and affecting the weakest groups: migrants, women and young people, categories which the electoral campaign is objectively not looking at”.
To do some examples: a couple under 35 (he who works in commerce, in catering) has a total income of almost 17 thousand euros: in seven years they have lost purchasing power of 5 thousand and 84 euros; while a family with parents between 35 and 44 years old (he in logistics, she in social and health services), with an income of 31 thousand and 542 euros, lost 4 thousand and 600 euros between 2016 and 2022.
The Square it’s still more dramatic as mentioned if you turn on the headlight on women: in 2022 they suffered a decline in incomes greater than that of men and if the comparison goes to 2016 the step backwards in terms of incomes was 14.2 percent compared to 10.2% of men”: in the higher declarations at 50 thousand euros only 16 percent are those ‘in pink’. Why? “Women work on fixed-term contracts more frequently than men. Every year – Vigarani points out – they lose 200 euros, in seven years they have reached 6 thousand euros less: if the average income of men is 21,550 euros, that of women stops at 15,626 euros, 27.5% less “. The cause can be traced back to the greater presence of women in ‘poor’ sectors, such as trade and tourism, “where the majority of contracts are part-time, largely involuntary, which often hide illegal work”.
Another a significant factor that emerged from the survey is age. “If in the manufacturing sector, with a greater male presence, those under 35 between 2016 and 2022 they lost only 4.8 percent of their wages, for their peers in the trade the figure rises to -16%, up to -27% in restaurants, hotels and public establishments”. And the nightmare does not it doesn’t even spare the city of Modena, where the decline in the real value of incomes due to the crisis in the tertiary sector (services) is very strong: “The city – confirms Govoni – is the provincial capital, but also of precarious and underpaid work”. north, which after the good performance of 2021 linked to Covid, driven by biomedical, landslides by 9.4 percent: “Carpi too would need a bath of realism on the state of the economy and incomes, overcoming the too frequent commemoration of glories of the past”.
