In Umbria it is difficult to find graduate workers, but it is among the Italian regions with fewer graduates hired. The percentages of difficulty in finding graduates reach 74% among medical and paramedical staff, 70% among electronic and information engineers, and 68% among doctors in civil engineering and architecture. This is what emerges from the report created by Unioncamere, using data from the Excelsior Information System (curated by Unioncamere and Anpal) and those from AlmaLaurea, entitled “Graduates and Work – the professional opportunities of graduates in companies, Survey 2023”, which explores I understand the situation in all Italian regions.
«Umbria does not shine and in fact is at the bottom of the rankings in terms of graduate hiring – states Giorgio Mencaroni, president of the Umbria Chamber of Commerce -, yet the region’s companies state that, on average in more than one case out of two, they have difficulties to find the graduates they need. In short, the mismatch is large and the Unioncamere-Excelsior report, very substantial and in-depth, must be studied in depth because it can contribute to implementing innovations in training and employment policies. How should we look into why Umbrian companies cannot find the staff they are looking for, given that it is difficult to find the types of graduates that exist in Umbria. In the sense, let me explain better, of looking into where these companies look for staff, what channels they use, what the problems are in sourcing, so as to be able to implement some effective strategy to untie these knots. I would like to underline – adds Mencaroni – that, although the growth is lower than the national figure, between 2019 and 2023 the hiring of graduates in Umbria grew from 5 thousand 284 to 5 thousand 900, testifying to an insufficient but present change in the system Umbrian business towards levels of greater innovation and quality. But the road remains long, even if the signs in this sense are there and, for some companies, even significant. The Chamber of Commerce is at the forefront in accompanying and pushing this change, putting the digital and ecological transition at the center.”
There is a paradox in the hiring of graduates in Umbria by companies: on the one hand the region, in 2023, is the third to last in terms of percentage of graduate hiring out of total job placements, on the other hand Umbrian companies report that they do not they manage to find over one in two graduates they need, with percentages reaching 74% among medical and paramedical staff, 70% among electronic and information engineers, 68% among civil engineering graduates and architecture.
In 2023, the graduates that companies had declared they wanted to hire were 5,900, 9.1% of total hires. Only Abruzzo is worse, with 8.3%, and Valle d’Aosta with 6.8%. On the podium, however, Lombardy (18.8% of graduate hiring out of total job placements), Lazio (18.4%) and Piedmont (15.7%). As for the other two regions of the Centre, they are not much higher than Umbria: Tuscany, in fact, has 9.5% and the Marche 9.3%.
The graduates hired in Umbria by companies were 5 thousand 284 in 2019, while, due to the pandemic, in 2020 they dropped to 3 thousand 912, then showing a strong advance both in 2021 (4 thousand 904) and in 2022 (6 thousand 475), the year which, as with GDP, have exceeded pre-covid levels. In 2023, as a result of much more modest economic growth, the number of graduate hires in the region drops to 5,900, -8.9% compared to 2022.
Overall, if we compare 2019 with 2023, the growth in hiring of graduates in Umbria is 11.7%, much less than the +30.2% recorded at a national level.
These are the job placements in Umbria for university purposes. The first value is the number of hires, the second the percentage of recruitment difficulties for companies. The ranking is by number of starts per university address and goes from the largest value to the smallest.
Number of hires Difficulty in finding
ADDRESSES of graduates
ECONOMIC 1,940 60%
TEACHING AND TRAINING 830 49%
MATHEMATICS, PHYSICS AND COMPUTER SCIENCE 430 64%
HEALTHCARE AND PARAMEDIC 420 74%
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING 400 61%
CHEMICAL-PHARMACEUTICAL 370 65%
CIVIL ENGINEERING AND ARCHITECTURE 310 68%
ELECTRONIC ENGINEERING 260 70%
PHILOSOPHY, HISTORY AND ART 180 47%
POLITICAL-SOCIAL 160 47%
TRANSLATORS AND INTERPRETERS 140 59%
OTHER ENGINEERING AREA 100 49%
MEDICAL AND DENTAL 100 65%
MOTORCYCLE SCIENCES 80 65%
AGRICULTURAL AND ZOOTECHNICAL 50 65%
LEGAL 40 30%
STATISTICAL 40 6%
PSYCHOLOGICAL 30 55%
BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES AND BIOTECHNOLOGIES – 0%
EARTH SCIENCES – 0%
“Italian companies – states the Unioncamere study – have encountered difficulties in finding 1 in 2 graduates, equal to 376 thousand entries in 2023 (49% of graduate entries), accentuating an already complex situation which in 2019 concerned 1 graduate in 3.”
In 62.9% of cases the reason for these difficulties is given by the “offer gap”, i.e. a reduced number of candidates available on the market, especially when looking for graduates from the statistics, healthcare and paramedical, medical and dental and chemistry fields. pharmaceutical.
The recruitment difficulties linked to the “skills gap”, or linked to inadequate training, indicated by companies in 29.3% of cases, are more limited.
Among the skills most requested by companies for 2023 entries are flexibility and adaptation, the ability to work in a team and problem solving (requested by 84.4%, 81.1% and 79% respectively, 2% of expected graduate hires).
More generally, companies require previous experience to fill the positions they are looking for. In 53.1% of cases graduates are required to have specific experience, in 34.5% of cases a slightly broader experience, however in the same sector, and in 6.0% of cases generic experience. Only in 6.4% of cases is no type of experience required.
