First quarter 2025: production improving Labor hoarding in more than one in three companies
Monday 31 March 2025
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- In first quarter of 2025 large companies associated with Confindustria show greater optimism compared to the last quarter of last year. According to the results of the quick survey on industrial production for the first three months of the year, 53.0% of the respondents expect stable production, the 32.4% expects an increase and 14.6% a decrease. This figure marks an improvement over the fourth quarter of 2024when the share of those who foresaw a increase stopped at 26,9%while those who predicted a decrease were the 28,4% (Chart 1).
- Industrialists continue to consider demand and orders as the main factors supporting production, with the positive balance increasing: in March, it reached 6.1%, up from 2.5% recorded in February.
- Forecasts on the availability of labour show a slight improvement, although remaining in negative territory with a balance at -0.1%.
- On the contrary, production costs continued to deteriorate for the second consecutive month, going from -3.0% in January to -5.7% in February and reaching -8.1% in March.
- Expectations on the financial conditionsWhile remaining positive, they worsened: after peaking at 7.2% last month, the balance dropped to 2.1% in March.
- As for the availability of materialsthe balance remains negative, but with a slight improvement (-3.2% compared to -3.9% previously).
- More encouraging, however, are the judgements on the availability of facilitieswhich remained positive and showed an increase from 0.8% to 3.2%.
- In the March questionnaire, industrialists were asked how they view the phenomenon of labour hoardingi.e. the tendency of companies to retain their workforce even in the presence of a drop in production. The results show that the labour hoarding involves more than one third of the respondents (34.7%). There is instead a 16,3% of the sample who, in the face of decreases in production, claimed to have reduced employment. For the remaining half of the respondents, however, the phenomenon is not relevant because their companies are not facing a slowdown in production activity. Among those who chose to retain their workforce, the 37,8% is managing the situation through lay-offs or temporary reduction of working hours. Another 34,8% decided to maintain the skills already present in the company, aware of the difficulties and high costs in finding new qualified personnel. The 27,4% is hiring new staff with appropriate skills to cope with the transformation of production processes, such as new products or technologies.
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