Six hundred fewer regular carers and housemaids in Como. This is the data just published by the INPS Observatory in relation to 2023, a figure in line with the regional and national one which certifies the enormous difficulty in bringing out domestic work, despite the periodic “click days” for regularization.
The INPS photograph records 7,506 domestic workers and carers in the province of Como in 2023 compared to 8,118 the previous year. Six hundred professional figures disappeared from the radar of the social security institution, but in all likelihood remained employed in as many families, paid illegally. The majority, legal or otherwise, are women and foreigners, coming mainly from the East, Ukraine first and foremost, but also from the Philippines and South America. And those over 65 are growing, in Como as elsewhere.
An infographic on domestic workers in Lombardy
The origin of the underground economy is the lack of aid to the sector, the increasingly difficult access to amnesties and bonuses and also the increase in wages, which make it complicated for a family to take care of a regular employee.
In fact, the contractual increases triggered especially last year have brought the gross monthly costs borne by families to an average of 1,600 euros, an important sum for a family but which reaches the worker’s pocket drastically reduced by taxes and makes situations attractive, if not completely irregular, on the margins of the law.
As for the bonus, to access the one launched at the beginning of the year you had to be over 80 years old, disabled, have a carer’s allowance, an existing contract for domestic work and an ISEE of less than 6 thousand euros. In the province of Como no more than 150 families matched the identikit.
For Paola Monzanipresident of Acli Colf Como, what is missing above all is a serious welfare policy that helps families who often are unable to pay wages and contributions.
“The data on domestic work have always fluctuated – he explains – also due to the effect of the decrees that are periodically published to encourage emergence”. In Italy there was a peak in regularizations during Covid because without a regular contract you couldn’t leave the house to go to work, then with the Relaunch decree there was another push towards emergence: «Then unfortunately as it always happens, since there is no policy that protects or facilitates families, for example by studying greater forms of deduction of contributions paid, we return to the underground economy”.
«Foreign workers – explains Monzani – generally have every interest in asking to be brought into compliance because their regularization as documents also depends on that. However, they often favor “grey” solutions, those that allow them to report the minimum to the INPS”.
The solution? «An in-depth analysis would be needed to allow for greater deductions, while now only part of the contributions can be deducted. And we should provide automatic mechanisms in the tax returns of these workers, so that resources are injected into public accounts that could be used for welfare.”
