There are jobs, but not the right candidates: an overview of the mismatch

When people talk about the mismatch between labour supply and demand, they usually think of a numbers problem. The Excelsior report, produced by Unioncamere for Italy’s Ministry of Labour, tells a more nuanced story. For the second half of 2025, Italian companies planned 2.8 million new hires, 2% more than the same period a year earlier. Growth is driven by services, which account for 70% of the total: tourism, accommodation, food service and retail alone represent about one million contracts, up 12.5% and 6.9% respectively. The catch is that these are, in general, sectors with less specialisation and lower pay.

Where Demand Is Slowing

While services surge, the more innovative sectors are holding back. ICT and advanced business services expect 206 thousand hires in total, with annual drops of 13% for ICT and 8% for advanced services. Industry is also cutting back, and metalworking and electronics alone lose 25 thousand contracts. Looking at profiles, requests for managers fall by 16.7%, along with technical and clerical roles, while skilled jobs in services and retail grow. Metropolitan areas and the North East are the most dynamic. Elsewhere, growth appears mainly in areas with strong tourism, a sign of a possible concentration of the economy around large cities at the expense of inland areas.

Searching for Staff Is a Matter of Months

Finding the right people remains the real bottleneck. In construction, more than 6 in 10 workers are hired after a long search. Recruiting difficulty reaches 49.5% in IT and telecommunications, 47.6% in transport and logistics, and 46.7% in tourism services. The issue affects companies of every size, except those with 500 employees or more, where difficulties concern about three hires in ten. For the hardest profiles to find, employers need more than four months, with peaks between 5.7 and 6 months in textiles, wood and furniture, and construction.

Pay and Productivity, the Open Question

Then there is the question of value. The sectors that hire the most are often those where pay stays far from the value produced. In tourism and food service, value added per worker is 41 thousand euros a year, against gross pay of 20,500 euros. In healthcare and social care it goes from 44 thousand to 24 thousand, in education from 56 thousand to 26 thousand. Without action on wages and contract renewals, the analysis warns that more employment may not bring more productivity, GDP and income.

The Great Turnover in Public Administration

Between 2025 and 2029, the public sector’s staffing need is estimated at 799 thousand people. Some 96% of it is replacement, meaning 768 thousand people over five years, about 154 thousand a year, as the baby boomer generation retires. Genuine expansion is far more limited, with 73% of new posts expected in healthcare, just over 22 thousand, and a slight contraction in education. Qualified and highly specialised figures weigh the most, at 38.7% of the need, while digitalisation and artificial intelligence support the modernisation of services.

What It Means for Companies

On education levels, over 46% of requests will concern people with technical secondary training, followed by graduates and ITS diploma holders (around 37%), while demand for low educational attainment falls to 12 or 13%. For companies, this means search times will not shorten on their own. This is where the work of a firm like Euren naturally meets the topic. When a technical or managerial profile takes months to find, traditional channels often fall short: what helps is a mapping of the market, the ability to reach people who are not actively applying, and an assessment that shows whether the right person on paper is also right for that company and for the phase it is going through. These are the activities Euren’s team carries out every day across executive search and talent acquisition, alongside companies of very different sizes and sectors.