[00:00:00] Speaker A: Foreign.
[00:00:04] Speaker B: In Italy. And you're listening to the Magic Towns Italy podcast.
[00:00:08] Speaker C: Welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy Podcast. I'm Anna and I'm here with Luca.
[00:00:14] Speaker A: Hi, Anna. Pleasure to talk to you again, like every Saturday, really, but still very nice.
[00:00:21] Speaker C: Today we're talking about a really, really interesting topic. Luca, do you want to start?
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Today we're talking about a topic that we've brought up time and again since we have started writing and doing podcasts. And it is the fact that Italy is shrinking.
It is not shrinking in land area. Obviously. The population of Italy is going down and it's going down faster and faster.
[00:00:45] Speaker C: Yeah, it's wild. I mean, we are a G7 country. People from all over the world dream about Italy and you. Yeah, we're actually losing people. It doesn't make sense. Right.
[00:00:56] Speaker A: But at the same time, the writing has been on the wall for a while. The statistic that has come to the light this week, which we published a few days ago, is perhaps the scariest I've seen that industry.
According to ISTAT, the National Statistics Institute, back in 2008, they predicted that around this time, 20, 25 births per year in equity will stabilize around half a million a year.
Even the worst case scenario assumed that there would be at least half a billion babies a year.
But do you actually know how many babies were born in 2024?
[00:01:41] Speaker C: No. How many?
[00:01:43] Speaker A: Less than 380,000. That's over 120,000 fewer than even the worst case forecast. A 35% collapse. A whole town the size of Venice was not born each year.
[00:02:00] Speaker C: I knew our birth rate was low, but hearing the actual numbers, it's. I mean, wow.
[00:02:06] Speaker A: What did you think of that graphic I posted?
[00:02:08] Speaker C: Yeah, that's really scary.
[00:02:10] Speaker A: It is not a widespread understanding yet just how bad things are.
[00:02:13] Speaker C: Yeah, but it's a really good article because you compare it to other countries, and that's really interesting, even for people like me that don't like that many percentages and data.
[00:02:24] Speaker A: We got into a vicious cycle. Now, fewer births mean older population means a few young people that work, that innovate, pay taxes and support the older population.
And that's a really big deal for the economy and the society.
[00:02:41] Speaker C: And it's not just about the babies. I mean, people are also just leaving.
[00:02:46] Speaker A: So Italy is losing people on two fronts. There are not enough babies being born, and a lot of young adults are either not staying in Italy or they're not coming here in the first place, because that's the other thing that we are interested in, that is how many foreigners are living to Italy? That's our primary audience.
[00:03:04] Speaker C: So basically more people are dying or leading them being born or moving in.
[00:03:10] Speaker A: In this, our first podcast in a Shrinking Italy series, we are dealing with the brain drain.
Young Icardians who are moving abroad for better opportunities.
[00:03:21] Speaker C: I. I thought about it myself, honestly, I'm my late 20s and seriously, so many of my friends have already left, like London, Berlin, we all talk about it at some point.
[00:03:36] Speaker A: There's a report, another report that came out a few days ago, and like now, a national resource council that found that between 2011 and 2024, about 630,000 Italians aged 18 to 35 moved away to other countries.
[00:03:53] Speaker C: No, that's like over half a million young people just gone.
[00:03:58] Speaker A: And that is not the worst part, because if you balance that out with the people that came back, the net loss is still around half a million. So they were down half a million young adults in that period. And those people, of course, are not working or have making families or coming back to the country.
[00:04:18] Speaker C: Half a million young people building their lives somewhere else and not here.
[00:04:22] Speaker A: That's. There are reasons for that. Right, and we'll get to those. But I hope you're sitting down, because the next statistic is the worst among all the ones that I mentioned so far. Are you ready for it?
[00:04:37] Speaker C: No, I'm not sure about it.
[00:04:39] Speaker A: In this period, for every young Italian or foreigner that we gained from abroad, we lost 14.5 people.
[00:04:50] Speaker C: No, that's crazy.
[00:04:52] Speaker A: That's right.
And in all the countries covered by the statistics, it is by far the worst ratio. The next worst is France. And if in France the ratio is 1.4, so it's 1/10 of Italy. 10 times more young people leave in Italy and are not replaced by an equivalent amount of people coming in than in France.
[00:05:17] Speaker C: Like, when I think about my friends from university, one's in London and other ones in Berlin, I've got a couple in Spain, some in the us. Like, we are all just scattered everywhere because nobody thought they could make it work here.
[00:05:31] Speaker A: According to the survey that I was mentioning earlier, the top reason that young Italians have for living abroad is better work opportunities. And about 16% said that that was the reason why they left Italy. And another 10% said that they would love to advance their career, which if you ask me, really means the same thing. So a quarter, let's say, leave because they want to find better jobs or better career opportunities.
[00:05:56] Speaker C: I mean, if you can't find something decent at home, you go where you.
[00:06:00] Speaker A: Can and you Know what's funny? A quarter is really not that much. And the other reasons for leaving were interesting to me too. The second most cited reason for leaving Italy among young people is higher efficiency of the state bureaucracy and civil rights, and that's about 14%.
[00:06:20] Speaker C: I'm not even surprised by that one. Our bureaucracy is an absolute nightmare. Have you ever tried to start a business here? Or even just, I don't know, get your driver license renewed? If you've studied abroad and seen how things work in places like the Netherlands or Germany, you come back here and you're just like, why does everything have to be so complicated?
[00:06:43] Speaker A: Yeah, some people feel that other countries are just more merit based or run more fairly. The third big reason for leaving mentioned as better quality of life, around 14% as well.
[00:06:56] Speaker C: That one is pretty ironic though, isn't it? Because to everyone else, Italy is the dream for quality, quality of life, like the food, the sunshine, Laguna Civita and all that. And yet here we are, living for a better quality of life somewhere else. It's kind of funny in a sad way.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: The proof is in the pudding. People are not moving here. So that probably means that when they say quality of life, they mean higher salaries, career growth, public transport, efficient services.
It's not like they say that the food or the weather are bad because obviously they are good. But in practical terms, life can be easier elsewhere, even if it rains.
[00:07:39] Speaker C: If you are trying to start a career or have a family, you want places where you can actually get a decent salary, find affordable childcare, have, I don't know, good public services.
And then there are people that just leave because they want to experience something new.
[00:07:58] Speaker A: About 10% of respondents say that that's the reason for leaving. And that was my reason actually to see the world. A lot of people do that in every country.
So there are push and pull factors. Italy pushes people away with certain problems, and then there are other countries that pull them in with opportunities.
[00:08:14] Speaker C: It's not even just about leaving Italy versus staying. There is this huge internal thing happening to like tons of young people.
Do you say are just moving from the south up to the north?
[00:08:28] Speaker A: And that's actually bigger than the international migration. If we said earlier that in total about half a million young Italians moved abroad within more than 10 years.
In the same period, about 20% of young people from the southern regions of Italy moved to other parts of Italy, to the center, and mostly to the north.
One estimate says that half a million southerners were educated to the north in that period. And if you add those that Moved abroad from the South. The south lost about 650,000 young people out of a population of about 19 million. That is just immense if you look.
[00:09:10] Speaker C: At the whole picture. Fewer babies, young people living the south, young people leaving the country. Yeah, of course our population is dropping and getting older. It all makes sense now.
[00:09:21] Speaker A: As I said, we've been preaching this for a long time, but we're getting to the point that people can't ignore the data anymore.
[00:09:28] Speaker C: Yeah. And what about bringing people into Italy though? You'd think we'd be trying to attract foreigners to move here, right?
[00:09:36] Speaker A: You could say that this is our mission of magic towns. Many countries with low birth rates rely on attracting immigrants to keep their population and workforce stable. But Italy has done a terribles over that, especially when it comes to attracting young professionals from abroad.
[00:09:53] Speaker C: You always hear about foreigners being obsessed with Italy, you know, digital nomads wanting to work from some beautiful places.
But how many of them actually move here to work? Especially young, skilled people from other countries?
[00:10:11] Speaker A: Very few, comparatively. In the reports that we looked at, we also see how attractive Italy is to young people from other advanced countries.
And Italy comes out near the bottom. To give you an example From Denmark, over 20% of emigrating Danes go to France, but under 1% come to Italy.
[00:10:31] Speaker C: So they're basically skipping us entirely. Like what are we doing so wrong?
[00:10:37] Speaker A: Some of the reasons mentioned are the language barrier and how jobs are advertised in Italy.
[00:10:43] Speaker C: And maybe we are not just seen as a place to actually build a career compared to London or Berlin, we don't really have a reputation for having this booming job market in all the cool industries.
[00:10:57] Speaker A: Yeah, we don't have as many tech hubs compared to other countries. But I think the reason is more tied to our immigration policies.
For non EU folks like Americans or Australians or Canadians, it is pretty hard to get a work visa in Italy.
[00:11:14] Speaker C: I have a friend from the US who literally dreamed of living here her whole life. And after looking into it, she was just like, too much paperwork and I'd have to take a massive pay cut. So she ended up in Switzerland.
[00:11:28] Speaker A: The bottom line is Italy has not been replacing its lost youth with newcomers. And in fact the net immigration has slowed down too. The only immigrants that still come in large numbers are those from developing countries doing work in agriculture, caregiving. And even that is less than it used to be.
And I think if you want to get an idea for how crazy the system is, each year the Italian government sets quotas for different types of work visas. Do you know how many entrepreneur Visas there are. There's only 500 for the whole country. And at the same time, there are 1200 visas, which are processed, by the way, in a faster queue for football players.
[00:12:18] Speaker C: That's so Italian, though, like, literally care more about culture than startups.
[00:12:24] Speaker A: It is objectively absurd that we allow more foreign footballers than foreign entrepreneurs by policy. And it really tells you that our priorities are skewed.
[00:12:33] Speaker C: We shouldn't be like, begging entrepreneurs to come create jobs here.
[00:12:37] Speaker A: I haven't even gone into the details of it. These people have to invest massive amounts of money and committed to hiring workers from the outset.
That are far easier places to set up shop, if you ask me. Italy should be trying a bit harder. So anyway, that is just one small example. Historically, Italy has been a bit closed off or slow in courting foreign talent. And there hasn't been a strong push to say, hey, come and build your future in Italy like some other countries have.
[00:13:09] Speaker C: So what can we actually do about this? I mean, I know we can't fix it all in one podcast, but, like, are there examples from other places that worked?
[00:13:20] Speaker A: As you say, we can't fix this in a podcast. But still, if we have to look around the world, Ireland, which I mentioned before, is a very powerful success story. Ireland reminds me a lot of Italy, especially in northeastern Italy. Really agricultural? Yes, agricultural background, very Catholic, historically huge immigration, massive. Ireland exported tens of millions of people in the years of great immigration.
And they went from a country poor, very poor country that people ran away from to one that people, including returning Irish people, came back to. How did they do that? They grew their economy massively. They turned Dublin into a tech hub. There are incentives like low corporate taxes. They kept a very strong tie with the Irish diaspora. Of course, tax rates and the English language play a massive role in attracting foreign talent.
And when things improved at home, a lot of the Irish who had left before actually returned. And a lot of foreigners now are moving to Ireland because of the jobs that were there.
[00:14:28] Speaker C: And they did that in, what, just a couple of decades. That's actually pretty impressive.
[00:14:34] Speaker A: There's other examples, Nordic countries, we don't think about it like that these days, but places like Norway or Denmark were pretty poor not that long ago, 50 years ago, and people emigrated from those countries. Now they have some of the strongest economies in the world, the highest quality of life, and they attract talent from everywhere.
[00:14:56] Speaker C: But also Spain and Portugal after 2008, tons of young people left, but look at them now. They really bounced back. So their economy has got better and they have been Actively trying to bring people in. They created this digital nomad visa, gave tax breaks to foreign retirees and remote workers, and now Madrid and Lisbon are full of international people.
[00:15:21] Speaker A: Few people remember that only 10 years ago Spain and Portugal were said to be on the brink of bankruptcy.
And they have really turned around. So Italy is only just waking up to these kind of ideas. We actually passed a law, as you know, you've covered it, Anna, about the digital nomad visa. And we hope that's going to make a big difference, but it is not widely promoted yet. And another thing which we covered last week is the new quota free work permit for Italian descendants. That will make it easier for people with heritage in countries like Argentina, Brazil, the US to come to Italy and get a work permit more easily. Although I should add, not to be an entrepreneur. You could only find a job working for someone else.
[00:16:09] Speaker C: So like now someone with an Italian great grandparent in Argentina could move here to work without all the usual bureaucratic nightmare.
[00:16:18] Speaker A: It's a nice gesture to reconnect with the Italian diaspora and these people might actually bring skills and passion for Italy. But it feels like too little too late. If we don't also fix the other bigger issues.
[00:16:33] Speaker C: We also need to improve the actual job situation.
Italy needs not only to open the door to more people, but also make them actually want to stay once they get there.
[00:16:44] Speaker A: Sometimes our policymakers feel like they lack long term vision, not only because they don't implement the right policies, but also because we backtrack on the right policies. Italy had a very good program that gave big tax breaks to Italians and foreigners who wanted to move to Italy and wanted to work in Italy after they'd been abroad for a long time.
And it was actually working. It brought back tens of thousands of people, including myself. And just as recently as last year, the government cut back that program massively. Shorter duration, stricter criteria, and a smaller tax break.
[00:17:21] Speaker C: Why would you cut something that was.
[00:17:23] Speaker A: Actually working instead of encouraging more skilled immigrants to come in? It feels like the slogan is we are tough on immigration and then, you know, cut out every immigrant, whether it is needed or not. It's a little bit upside down.
[00:17:39] Speaker C: I really hope people start pushing back on this stuff because what we are doing now clearly isn't working.
[00:17:46] Speaker A: There is a growing awareness. The charter that we mentioned before, the one with the collapse in birth numbers, really has been everywhere over social media and it is a little bit like a wake up call and people are finally talking about this crisis openly. Anyway, we at MadVictowns have been banging on about these issues since we started because we can see it in the towns that we cover.
[00:18:08] Speaker C: We really do care about this because we genuinely love Italy and these little communities and we want them to have a future.
[00:18:15] Speaker A: Exactly. So maybe to close us off, we can talk about a little bit of myth busting with our listeners, especially those who are abroad and are curious about what it's really like to work in Italy. We often get questions, we hear assumptions about Italy's situation. So let's talk about a couple of these stereotypes really quickly.
[00:18:34] Speaker C: So I always hear people say there are no jobs in Italy, like all the time. Is that actually true?
[00:18:42] Speaker A: No, it isn't true. A lot of the comments to our chat were along those lines. Why would people stay in Italy to have children if there are no jobs? That's absolutely untrue. There are plenty of job openings. We see it all the time in businesses shutting down because they can't find workers. And there are definitely more jobs than job seekers. One issue is a mismatch. The jobs that are available often don't match what job seekers want or are qualified for. For instance, there are tens of thousands of vacancies for skilled workers, nurses, electricians, plumbers. But these may not be jobs that young, college educated Italians are willing or able to take.
Or the jobs are in the north, but the job seekers are in the south and they may not want to relocate.
[00:19:32] Speaker C: Companies are literally desperate for software developers and they just, they can find them. So it's not that there's nothing available, it's just that what's available and what people are looking for don't match up.
[00:19:49] Speaker A: So youth unemployment is high, but many employers also say that they can't find people for certain roles. It is a structural issue in the economy and education system. But saying there's no jobs is an absolute myth. Next one.
[00:20:03] Speaker C: So the next one is all jobs in Italy are underpaid. Is it actually true?
[00:20:10] Speaker A: I would say yes and no. We will cover this in more depth in a future article on Magic towns. But to cover this very quickly, many jobs are underpaid. And these salaries are especially low compared to other Western European countries. So for instance, a junior office worker or a teacher military makes less than their counterpart in Germany or France.
[00:20:33] Speaker C: I was actually pretty shocked when I saw some entry level salaries even in expensive cities like Milan. Like, it's really tough to live on that unless your family helps you out.
[00:20:44] Speaker A: There are industries that pay very well. Engineers in finance and tech roles, you can get very good pay. Doctors and to a lesser Degree nurses are paid decently compared to other European countries.
But also you have to look at the cost of living because outside the big cities, life in Italy can be quite attractive. So a moderate salary might go pretty far in mid sized town in Emilia Romagna, the Veneto, than it would in Paris or in London.
[00:21:17] Speaker C: Yeah, that's a good point. Healthcare is basically free, university doesn't cost much and tons of people live with family longer, which saves money. But still just in terms of pure money, a lot of young people feel like they can earn way more elsewhere, so. And honestly they are actually right.
[00:21:37] Speaker A: Yeah. So the stereotype I would say is half right or half wrong. Next time. Do we have another one?
[00:21:42] Speaker C: Yeah, the next one is is it easy to move to Italy for work? Like if someone is thinking about coming here, how easy it is actually if.
[00:21:52] Speaker A: You are EU or EEA or Swiss citizen, it is your right to move to Italy. Nothing can stop you because that's what the law says. You will still deal with a little bit of Italian bureaucracy when you arrive. That can be pretty simple. As a European citizen, if you're outside the eu, like if you're American or Canadian and you don't have Italian ancestry under the new work visa, then it will be challenging. There is a squatter based system, the infamous decorator Flucy, where everyone is clicking on the same day to try and get a slot in the in the system and that most people can't. And it allows only a certain number of foreign workers per year and that is tough to get into. Also you will need a job offer, you need a sponsor, an employer and realistically you won't do that if you don't speak Italian. So it's tough.
[00:22:51] Speaker C: Yeah, I've heard some absolutely horror stories of people waiting months and months for work permits or company that just give up because it takes too long.
[00:23:02] Speaker A: It is not like Canada or Australia which have a clear point system. You can apply proactively if the country wants you, you have something to give to the country.
There's a way in the US used to be like this a little bit. So in it it's a little bit more like a lottery. There are exceptions for highly skilled employees, intra company transfers, or if you qualify for citizenship because you have an Italian parent or grandparent.
But it is not super easy. Although I would say the new digital nomad visa is shining a brighter night onto this process.
[00:23:40] Speaker C: So we need the energy, the ideas, the workforce that new people can bring. We need our own young people to actually believe they can make it here, not somewhere else.
[00:23:51] Speaker A: I'm hoping that this topic is finally getting the attention it deserves. The statistics that we covered, they are sobering, but they're waking people up. Hopefully at some point they'll wake up someone in the government. It might take decades, but it might happen. The idea that the population could jump by several million in the coming decades is a very strong argument for reform.
So to wrap this up, I hope we didn't depraise our listeners too much and I really hope this is going to spur some of our younger listeners and to listen to some of the advice we gave you on ways we can actually find a job in Italy.
[00:24:32] Speaker C: So yeah, come join the conversation on our Facebook page or on Instagram and just search for Magitanz Italy and you will find us. We love reading your comments and messages.
[00:24:43] Speaker A: Yes, please send us your comments and messages and share this with as many people as you can because we need to make a little bit of noise so the powers that be start to put into place sensible reforms to change things. You will also find more information on this topic and many other topics and about all the hundreds of Italian towns that we cover on MagicTowns it.
We have articles and a contact form so that's all you need to get in touch with Anna or myself.
[00:25:14] Speaker C: Thank you so much for listening. We know that was a lot of heavy information, but it's so important to talk about.
[00:25:21] Speaker A: Now you can go back to the more fun part of your Saturdays. Thank you so much for listening and we will talk to you next week for the last podcast before our Christmas break. Have a nice Saturday.
[00:25:33] Speaker B: That's it for this week on MagicTouns Italy. You can create a free
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