Two out of three Italians would like to work less. The rule of “doing the bare minimum” wins

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MILAN – Italians would like to work less. This is the desire of two out of three employed people. Perhaps this is not surprising, given that in the OECD rankings of hours worked in a year we are usually at the top of the list. And a request is increasingly emerging “from below” to review the alternation between life time and professional time, as the company agreements that include the “short week” in organizations are beginning to demonstrate; and as reported by the platforms for contract renewals, for example that of the metalworkers who just yesterday put the 35-hour week back on the table.

The seventh Censis-Eudaimon report on corporate welfare also investigates the trend: it turns out that 67.7% of employed Italians would like to reduce the time dedicated to work in the future. An aspiration that cuts across ages: in fact, 65.5% of young people, 66.9% of adults and 69.6% of over 50s want it.

Do the bare minimum

If the world has talked about quiet quittingi.e. the tendency not to use all one’s energies in the workplace but to do the “indispensable minimum”, even Italy does not seem to escape this logic: “Already today 30.5% of employed people (34.7% among young people) declares that he commits himself to work only as much as is necessary, refusing overtime, calls or emails outside working hours and carrying out only what he is required to do according to his job”, says Censis.

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That there is a disconnect between work and personal fulfillment, almost as if it were just a means of subsistence to place one’s dreams elsewhere, also emerges from the fact that for over half of the employed (52.1%) “work currently influences private life less than in the past, because he dedicates himself to activities and has values ​​that he considers more important. 54.2% of young people, 50.1% of adults and 52.6% of elderly people share this condition”. Fewer sacrifices for the profession, therefore: almost 28% gave up a better job than their current one because the office was too far from their home.

Women, children and work do not go together

Among the aspects highlighted in the research, the disadvantaged situation affecting women once again emerges. For example, with motherhood: the employment rate of women with children is 58.6%, that of men with children is 89.3%. The gap to the detriment of women is -30.7 percentage points, while in Germany it is -17.4, in France -14.4, in Spain -19 and in Greece -29.1. “The arrival of children revives a traditional family model, with the ancient division of tasks by gender. In 2022, resignations and consensual terminations from work relating to parents with children up to one year of age involved 44.7 thousand mothers and 16.7 thousand fathers. Regarding the reasons for resignation, 41.7% of mothers and 2.8% of fathers resigned due to difficulty in reconciling work with childcare due to the lack of care services, and 21.9% of mothers and 4.3% of fathers due to difficulties in reconciling work and caring for children due to problems related to work in the company”.

The analysis also shifts to the relationship with companies, with a good majority of employees judging the attention to the specific vulnerabilities of workers positively. However, the figure drops when it comes to “basic conditions of workers”, for example the safety.

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