More than a third of companies in Italy employ foreign workers, according to new data published by the chambers of commerce group Unioncamere and the Labour Ministry.

Overall, foreign employees have found a job in more than half a million companies, over 34 percent, and demand for foreign manpower continues to grow: 23.4 percent of the job contracts planned by companies last year concerned workers of different nationalities, for a total of over 1.3 million planned entries.

An interactive platform designed to respond to business needs

Such data and other figures are available as part of a new online tool provided by Unioncamere and the Labour Ministry to monitor the need of Italian businesses for foreign manpower. The tool also outlines the characteristics of employment in 2024 through a dashboard available on the website of Unioncamere's Excelsior Information System and on the government's Portale Integrazione Migranti website.

Overall, according to the data, some 2 million employees hail from abroad - more than 13 percent of the total workforce.

They work in nearly one in two companies in Trentino-Alto Adige, the region in northern Italy with the highest number of businesses with foreign personnel (48.2 percent). The quota exceeds 40 percentalso in Emilia-Romagna (44.8 percent) and in Tuscany (43 percent) in central Italy.

Among various sectors, tourism has the highest percentage of businesses employing workers of different nationalities (48.5 percent), followed by agriculture, forestry, and fishing (46.6%), manufacturing (42.3 percent), and construction (40.4 percent).

Tourism top sector demanding foreign personnel

A similar scenario has emerged with planned recruitments, according to the data. Tourism is the leading sector demanding foreign personnel, with 290,000 planned entries, followed by the primary sector, construction, operational services, transport, and logistics.

Overall, these five sectors cover about 65 percent of planned entries of foreign workers. Companies mainly plan the recruitment of foreign workers for low-skilled jobs. The list is topped by restaurant workers (231,000), followed by unskilled cleaning personnel (137,000), farmworkers and gardeners (about 106,000), delivery personnel (86,000), sales assistants (75,000), and workers specialized in construction and maintenance work (73,000).