
The structure of employment, by sector, is showing the shift of the economy from manufacturing to services and construction.
INSTAT data, based on the survey of enterprises in 2023, show that the share of industry in total wage employment recorded an annual decrease of 0.7% compared to 2022.
The industry sector contributed 19.9% of wage employment in 2023 from 20.65 in 2022.
The sectors with the highest growth in wage employment were construction and information and communication.
Construction workers accounted for 8.6% of total salaried employment in 2023 with an increase of 0.3 percentage points compared to 2022.
Information and communication contributed 3.7% of wage employment in 2023 from 3.4% a year earlier.
But the growth has not been so enthusiastic for the tourism sector in relation to the developments of recent years. Although hotels and restaurants are absorbing the largest number of new businesses in the last year, they are not contributing to the growth of wage employment.
In 2023, hotels and restaurants contributed 5.5% of total wage employment or 0.2 percentage points more than in 2022.
Despite the positive developments, the tourism sector is still characterized by high informality both in employment and in the payment of taxes, amortizing in this way the distribution of income.
Official data from the Social Insurance Institute show that last year, average contributors reached 827 thousand people, 25.6 thousand more than in 2022 or with an expansion of 3.2%. The insured represent the number of salaried employees.
The business sector has the highest number of insured employees with around 394,700 people in 2023 with a 2.4% increase from 2022.
Compared to before the pandemic, there is a decrease in the number of employees with insurance from businesses. From 2019 to 2023, there are 23,806 fewer people insured in businesses, while there are about 56,000 more self-employed people in the scheme, with a 67% increase.
Many highly paid employees in the business sector have passed as self-employed in recent years to avoid payroll taxes.
The number of employees reported by INSTAT is much higher than the number of contributors. In 2023, INSTAT reported that an average of over 1.3 million people were employed, while according to the Social Insurance Institute, only 62% of them paid insurance.
