The Italian business association representing industry and employers across the country, Confindustria, has a number of initiatives in different regions aimed at increasing Italy's labor force in the face of demographic change. Italy, like many other countries in Western Europe has an ageing population and a dwindling workforce.

One of the latest projects to be announced to try and address this and deploy migrant labor is from the local branch of Confindustria in the Emilia Romagna region, around the city of Bologna in the north-east of the country.

The project is aiming to hire 250 migrants hosted in CAS emergency reception centers in the Emilia-Romagna region, with an initial focus on the main city of Bologna. This new objective is part of a project aimed at responding to the growing need of businesses to find manpower, which was launched in September, under the title, 'If you flee, I will hire you.

Confindustria President for the Emilia area Sonia Bonfiglioli confirmed that the project is "already active," andthat ', launched by Confindustria Emilia Area Centro last September, "is already active today."

Some ten candidates are ready to be interviewed by companies with hiring procedures being finalized, organizers said.

Interviews with 74 people in CAS centers so far

The project will aim to hire for around 174 different job types. An initial phase is expected to last 12 months and will include a selection phase, language training and skills development.

Cleaners, drivers and carers are the most requested workers. As part of the project, the guests of CAS facilities who have expressed interest in finding a job have been helped to join the program: meetings have been held with 74 people over the last two months and 36 have already signed up to the project.

Finally, in January, company employees working in human resources will receive training to develop specific knowledge enabling them to evaluate non-standardized CVs and organize workshops with migrants.

Courses will also be held on 'Workers' rights and duties', in cooperation with Italy's trade unions CGIL, CISL and UIL.

Part of the jobs requested are "very concrete and manual, which Italians are often unwilling to undertake," commented Bonfiglioli.

"Our territory is made-up of small and medium-sized companies and the necessary figures range from maintenance workers to welders and electricians: it is important to include hundreds of young people who are migrants. If we don't give them a future perspective, they risk becoming a problem," she added.

Over 300,000 additional workers necessary by 2028

The local chapter of Confindustria has estimated that, between 2024 and 2028, businesses will need over 300,000 workers representing 8.4 percent of national workforce needs.

According to OECD data, Italy's working-age population will have decreased by an estimated 34 percent by 2060.

In 2025, 4,290 people representing 47 different nationalities arrived in Emilia-Romagna and were hosted in CAS facilities: over 3,500 hosting spots for mostly working-age asylum seekers and refugees were recorded in the metropolitan city of Bologna in 2024.

The project launched by Confindustria Emilia "is a very beautiful, far-sighted operation of civility that meets the needs of businesses, seeking to give migrants an opportunity to build a dignified future in Emilia-Romagna," stated Vincenzo Colla, the Deputy Governor of Emilia Romagna who is responsible for economic development, the green economy, energy, professional training, university and research for the region.

"Those arriving in our cities, often after dramatic experiences, must have the possibility of integrating through employment. Entrepreneurs can thus find in properly trained young people the manpower they can employ in production processes while, at the same time, youths are safeguarded from the danger" of being abandoned to their own devices, noted Colla.

"We are designing a new infrastructure [based on the ideas of a] social economy, which is also coherent with the new law we will pass in 2026 and this is a perfect example [of the direction of travel]," he concluded.