«What do you want to be when you grow up? I want to do a permanent job. What serene people, what fulfilled existences.” With just a few sentences, Checco Zalone, in one of his famous films, was able to masterfully summarize what has been for entire generations the myth of the permanent job, synonymous with the post office, schools, ministries, and public administration in general. An image that seemed to have faded also in the wake of a denigrating campaign on the state’s “slacker” who gets his time card stamped by his colleague to go to the seaside. And supplanted by the model of the rampant entrepreneur, of the self-made man on the American model, of work seven days a week, 24 hours a day, no Christmas and let alone mid-August. But then came the crisis and, after this, Covid, with the decimation of small businesses, the fear of not being able to reopen the business and also a change in vision of the way in which employment is understood.
All this perhaps explains the army of two million candidates who have responded to the call for 13,274 notices since January this year in the Public Administration with 288,558 places up for grabs, 176 percent more than those open in 2023. In fact, over 1.7 million people are registered on InPa, the recruitment portal where the application for participation in the competitions must be sent. Now no more paperwork, everything is digital in the public sector. The majority of selection tests (79 percent) come from local administrations. So while companies struggle to find employees, even with a fair salary, restaurants and hotels are forced to fish among immigrants with low qualifications, transport companies have no drivers, the State as soon as it calls does theen plein. What does it matter if the salary is not high and if the career is based mainly on seniority, in exchange there is the security of a free weekend, no night shifts and guaranteed holidays plus a few long weekends. Maybe it’s not a “cool” place, but it’s stable and crisis-proof and therefore peaceful.
Even the Confindustria newspaper, Il Sole 24 Ore he admitted that “an audience of people puts the public job among their professional options”. 55 percent of the candidates are women and come from the Centre-South. At the top of the ranking is Lazio (188,444 registered), followed by Campania (175,438) and Sicily (128,791). In the North, Lombardy stands out with 100,086 users, writes the economic daily, and this says a lot about the change in mentality. The moment to conquer the coveted permanent position is unique, perhaps unrepeatable. The baby boomer generation is retiring and will need to be replaced in a short time. Minister Paolo Zangrillo has announced that he wants to reach a batch of 350 thousand hires by next year. Never before has there been a meeting between supply and demand. The public is so understaffed that Zangrillo has even raised the possibility of extending, on a voluntary basis, employment up to 70 years. Just as one would not expect strong attention from the union. The general secretary of the CISL Public Service, Maurizio Petriccioli, says to Panorama which «must be carefully evaluated but accompanied by a decisive increase in positions advertised in the individual administrations, in order to guarantee continuity in the service».
To give an example, INPS has not held competitions for graduates for more than ten years and by the autumn it will present notices for 1,756 positions. But the ministries of Defence, Justice and Foreign Affairs are also on the waiting list. So either we take this train now or who knows how much longer we will have to wait. «Public administrations find themselves having to face an enormous demographic challenge: in the coming years the number of employees retiring will be higher than that of new hires, despite the hiring already planned and, unfortunately, largely insufficient» comments Petriccioli. And he underlines that “this imbalance risks further impoverishing the sector”.
The phenomenon of Great thank youthe mass resignations, the escape from the permanent job to change one’s life which was talked about immediately after Covid but which above all characterized the American job market, it was a fleeting trend and immediately returned. A report from the HR Innovation Practice Observatory of the School of management of the Polytechnic University of Milan confirms that 56 percent of those who did so in 2023 regretted it and would like to go back, even if only 5 percent of employees say they are « happy” in the office and 9 percent say they “feel good”. If we look at artisan and commercial companies, the statistics indicate a slow decline in the birth of new businesses. In a decade, from 2013 to 2023, there was a decline of 17.94 percent and 7.97 percent respectively. It is a sign that they are perceived as more linked to the fluctuating performance of the real economy and, even if they potentially offer higher earnings than public jobs, they have the “defect” of being less secure and requiring an all-encompassing commitment.
Then there is the phenomenon of private companies which, given that they are unable to find staff, have changed their mentality and «are willing to provide greater protection. We are witnessing a strong increase in permanent hiring and transformations into stable contracts by companies, an overall new situation” he tells Panorama the labor law expert and president of the Adapt Foundation, Francesco Seghezzi. In the month of July alone, as indicated by the Bulletin of the Excelsior Information System created by Unioncamere and the Ministry of Labour, companies were unable to find 245 thousand workers, almost half of the requests: in 32.3 percent of cases for lack of candidates, with tens of thousands of job offers falling through the cracks. Again, Excelsior’s analysis with Unioncamere estimates that between 2024 and 2028 there will be more than 680 thousand entries into the public administration corresponding to the same number of retirements. A turnover rate in the public sector is calculated to be over 20 percent, compared to an average value of almost 12 percent and 10.4 percent in the private sector.
Alessia Pinto, work psychologist and career consultant, underlines a Panorama that «after the pandemic the way of relating to work has changed. Covid has made us rediscover some values such as the time to dedicate to ourselves and the quality of life has become the discriminating factor in professional choices. A permanent job in the public sector gives stability and allows you to better manage family commitments.” Seghezzi also agrees on the change in mentality as a legacy of the pandemic, but adds one more fact. «We must consider that not all public administrations are experiencing this boom in a uniform way. In healthcare, for example, it is difficult to find staff.” Every day we read the news of patients left in the emergency room because the doctors employed in what is the front line of the public health system are fewer than needed. Precisely on healthcare, Petriccioli raises the issue of competitions «which do not find winners ready to be hired because the salaries are less attractive compared to what the private sector and the foreign job market is able to offer». The risk, the trade unionist recalls, “is to see the public sector deprive itself of its best talents”. The permanent job may still be a myth, but it is certainly no longer the Eden dreamed of by Zalone.
