21-05-2025
Nearly 100,000 young graduates left Italy over past decade, report finds
Some 97,000 young graduates have moved away from Italy in the past decade, the head of the country's national statistics agency, Istat, said on Wednesday.
A record number of degree holders aged between 25 and 34 - 21,000 - left the country in 2023, Istat President Francesco Maria Chelli told MPs during a presentation on key findings from the agency's latest annual report.
That's almost double the number (12,000) of young graduates who emigrated in 2022.
Around 31.6 percent of Italians aged 25 to 34 held a degree in 2024, Chelli said.
This put Italy well behind France and Spain, where the figure stood at more than 50 percent, according to Eurostat.
Within Europe, only Romania and Hungary ranked behind Italy.
In a 2024 study, research group Fondazione Nord Est found that losing highly qualified workers to emigration cost Italy an estimated €134 billion between 2011 and 2023 - over €10 billion a year.
Italy's brain drain is generally attributed by experts to a chronic shortage of job opportunities, especially in the south of the country, as well as non-competitive wages.
Though it has decreased significantly over the past few years, Italy's youth unemployment rate among people aged 15 to 24 remains among the highest in the EU.
It stood at 18.7 percent in January of this year – the eighth-highest in the bloc and well above the EU average of 14.6.
In an effort to lure back talent, Italy has in recent years introduced tax incentives for highly qualified Italian workers living abroad who choose to return home.
But such measures are often seen as insufficient to overcome Italy's lack of graduate-level employment opportunities and the low pay that often comes even with high-level positions.
According to a 2023 Istat report, Italian workers earn approximately €3,700 less per year than the average EU worker and over €8,000 less than the average German worker.
