Italy: Numbers of registered foreigners growing

Rome: A total of 3.8 million foreigners in Italy are recognized by the Italian social security and pensions agency INPS. Around 3.3 million of them are employed, based on data referring to 2019. According to a report by the agency, most of the foreigners were born in non-EU countries — around 68% of the total.

There are 3.8 million foreigners recognized by Italian social security and pensions agency INPS, 3.3 million of whom are employed (86.6% of the total), 252,276 pensioners (6.6%) and 259,495 who receive income support (6.8%), according to the INPS Observatory on Foreigners in 2019, published on November 26.

The total is about 63,000 more people than in 2018 (up 1.7%), and 522,000 more than in 2010. Most of the foreigners were born in non-EU countries (2,583,886, or 67.7% of the total), while 305,875 were born in EU-15 countries (8%) and 926,593 in other EU countries (24.3%).

Romanians represented the highest number of foreigners in Italy in 2019, with 756,217 people, equivalent to 19.8% of the total number of legal foreigners in the country. The second-highest group is Albanians with 343,923 people (9% of the total), followed by Moroccans (286,835 people, 7.5% of the total), Chinese (217,945, 5,7%), Ukrainians (175.997, 4,6%) and Filipinos (124,411, 3.3%).

Overall, these six nations make up half of the total number of foreigners recognised by INPS (49.9%).

Out of the Chinese citizens recognised by INPS, a total of 98.2% are employed and only 0.6% receive income support.Among people born in Ukraine, INPS data show that 82% have a job and 12.6% receive income support, with 5.4% being pensioners.

Men make up 55.2% of the overall number of foreigners, but the percentages flip among the Ukrainians (men only 18.9%) and Filipinos (men only 41.8%), as women are more present and often employed in care work.

On the other hand, 95.2% of the 84,055 Pakistanis in Italy are male, and 94.4% of the 106,990 Bangladeshis recognised by INPS are male.

A territorial analysis of the data revealed that 60.8% of foreigners live or work in northern Italy, with 24.1% in central Italy and only 15.1% in southern Italy and the islands.

An analysis of the number of legal foreigners compared to the resident population showed that the number of foreigners is three times higher in the north than in the south: 8.7 foreigners out of 100 reside in northern Italy, 7.7 in central Italy, and 2.8 in southern Italy and the islands.

In 2019, there were 2,836,998 employed foreigners, with an average annual income of €13,770. There are notable differences within the different types of foreign workers, however, with employees in the private, non-farm sector (2,002,034) earning an average annual salary of €16,182 (17.874,51 for men and 13.179,01 for women).
Foreign domestic workers totalled 534,409, predominantly female (only 11.6% male) with an average annual salary of €8,374.