There is an Italy that does not appear in the official productivity photographs, it is Italy that ages in silence, within the home, By increasingly entrusting one’s daily fragility to women who came from afar. Every morning, before dawn, thousands of carers cross the city, go up on peripheral buses, enter condominiums or isolated houses, prepare medicines, raise bodies, do not have white cups or unionized times, but hold the emotional and practical balance of a country that delegates the care to submerged relational economies.
In 2024 there are 817,403 domestic workers regularly recorded at INPS, falling 2.7% compared to the previous year, these are the data of the INPS domestic workers Observatory. The news that is most striking is a historical overtaking: For the first time the carers (413.161) exceed the domestic (404,242). 50.5% of domestic workers are now used in direct assistance duties to non self -sufficient people, reflecting the transformation of Italian families, more and more elderly, sun and in need of a daily support that cannot be guaranteed by public welfare or by increasingly subtle family networks.
On the other hand, more than two thirds of domestic workers are foreigners (68.6%)with a clear prevalence of women (88.9%), to indicate how Italy entrusts the management of their daily vulnerability to an often invisible workforce, not very protected and stratified by geographical origin, age and working conditions. The carers from Eastern Europe constitute the largest block (34.8% of the total), follow Italian workers (31.4%), now concentrated especially in a few regions (such as. Sardinia). The internationalization of the cure is accompanied by a de-gainization of the sector, the workers under 45 are now only 24.9% of the total, while a quarter is over 60 years old, highlighting the reality of a sector that ages together with the population it assists.
Observing the working conditionsit emerges how the carers work more also in terms of time, in 2024 33.7% work over 50 hours per week, while among the duties 59.5% stand below 25 hours. Yet 41.4% of male domestic workers and 36.8% of females earn less than 5,000 euros per year. Domestic work continues to be considered a “minor”, marginal work, despite its centrality in the holding of the social system.
The 2024 data forces to reflect highlighting a particular urgency: in the face of the structural and demographic changes of the country, domestic work is becoming the heart of social protection. Therefore, a new pact between state and families is needed, which recognizes the care as a social infrastructure to be supported through an investment in policies For aging, in the formation of caregivers, in the dignified regulation of domestic work and above all in the rethinking of care as collective responsibility.
*Sociologist, researcher at the Catholic University of the Sacred Heart
