Quarterly information of the Regional Labor Market Observatory.
THE OVERVIEW
In Italy, in the first quarter of 2024, “labor input, as measured by hours worked, increased by 0.6 percent compared to the previous quarter and by 1.5 percent compared to the first quarter of 2023. During the same period, GDP grew in both cyclical (+0.3 percent) and trend (+0.7 percent) terms.”
Insight AGRICULTURAL LABOR ON THE MOVE: SOME EVIDENCE IN TUSCANY
Edited by Sara Turchetti
The consequences of structural change on the agricultural labor market are a classic theme of agrarian economics (Timmer, 1988) and are highly dependent on the level of development of the reference context. While in transition countries it is the contraction of agricultural labor supply that prevails, resulting from the migration of the rural population to urban settings and the industry and service sectors, in advanced economies the implications may be mixed and not necessarily predictable (Christiaensen et al., 2021). Indeed, the trend toward the divestment of many farms and the triggering of selection processes favorable to the survival of the most competitive ones may lead to a reduction in the demand for labor, especially low-skilled labor. On the other hand, the disappearance of family labor, due not only to dynamics closely related to agriculture, can have opposite outcomes, with increasing substitution between family labor and wage labor and use of immigrant labor. A brief analysis of the case of agricultural labor in Tuscany is presented here.
