In Italy, one job offers in four is directed to workers from abroad, according to the labor ministry. There are 650,000 contract offers, particularly from firms in the tourist sector, where 20 percent of job offers target foreign labor.

The job market in Italy is looking for foreign workers, to the point that one job offers in four targets migrants. This is the snapshot captured by Unioncamere (Union of Chambers of Commerce) and by the Italian ministry of labor, which analyzed the hiring plans of industry and service firms in the first seven months of 2024.

The key sector is tourism

From January to July of this year, firms planned to sign 650,000 contracts with foreign workers which are particularly sought after in specific sectors.

The key sector driving the request for foreign workers is tourism: 18.8 percent of all planned contracts in the sector target them.

Many opportunities also come from support services for firms, such as call centers and cleaning services, and green maintenance. From the beginning of the year, tourism has reserved one-third of the total personnel hired (over 90,000 jobs) to migrants.

The same ratio is also present in the various transport services, logistics, and storage, a sector in which over 69,000 contracts were offered.

Increase in construction jobs compared with 2023

Some differences emerge from the comparison with 2023, a record year that saw over one million migrant workers hired. During the first seven months of 2024, the demand for foreign labor also increased in the construction sector, while it went down in the metallurgical and metal products industries.

Overall, for migrants, the number of job offers increased. Already in 2023, the request for foreign labor saw a peak, reaching 19.2 percent for overall industry requests for the year. This is the highest figure registered in the last six years, even higher than the already increased number witnessed in 2022 (17.8 percent of the total number of those hired by firms).