{"id":108785,"date":"2026-07-03T14:35:57","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:35:57","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/?p=108785"},"modified":"2026-07-03T14:35:57","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T13:35:57","slug":"the-south-is-growing-but-continues-to-lose-its-young-people-is-the-answer-high-tech-development","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.fondazionepirelli.org\/en\/corporate-culture\/blog\/the-south-is-growing-but-continues-to-lose-its-young-people-is-the-answer-high-tech-development\/","title":{"rendered":"The South is growing, but continues to lose its young people. Is the answer high-tech development?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Southern Italy is growing faster than the Italian average. It is encouraging to read in the business news that it is ‘driving’ the national economy for the fourth year running. Taking a closer look at the figures (ISTAT estimates for 2025), it can be seen that Italy\u2019s GDP increased by just 0.5 per cent<\/strong>, while that of the south increased by 0.6 per cent (although the Bank of Italy\u2019s Annual Report states that this growth slowed in the second half of the year). And yet, Confindustria points out, the economy \u2018remains at a standstill\u2019, whilst entire industrial sectors are facing serious crises. The latest to make the headlines is the \u2018white goods\u2019 sector, i.e. household appliances.<\/p>\n

Delving deeper and looking beyond short-term economic trends reveals that one of the social ‘wounds’ remains unhealed, a wound which is particularly undermining the already fragile growth trends in the South.\u00a0 This is the demographic issue, namely the brain drain of young people to the northern regions and abroad.\u00a0 The Great Exodus<\/strong>: 313,000 fewer young people in the South since 2019′ (Il Sole 24 Ore, 22 June).\u00a0 Company executives are also leaving:\u00a0 ‘One in four managers leaves the south to work for companies in the centre and north’. How can we envisage a future of development without a workforce?<\/p>\n

Put simply, the structural gaps between the North and South<\/strong> remain wide in terms of overall GDP, per capita income, employment, productivity, and the quality of services,\u00a0 and therefore in terms of prospects for younger generations.
\nIn short, we must recognise efforts towards growth, entrepreneurs’ commitment to investing and innovating, and a hard-working and skilled workforce’s dedication. However, we must never forget that the North-South divide is one of the factors that has held back the country\u2019s overall development and made recovery difficult ever since the unification of Italy.<\/p>\n

A closer look at the ISTAT data<\/strong> clearly shows that growth depends on a number of factors, starting with investment financed by NRRP funds.\u00a0 Public spending, which currently accounts for as much as two-thirds of growth in the south, will cease from 2026 (Corriere della Sera, 27 June). Tax incentives and the streamlining of red tape under the Single Special Economic Zone (comprising Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Molise, Puglia, Sicily, Sardinia, Marche and Umbria,\u00a0 a very large part of the South) are also having a positive impact, encouraging entrepreneurs to invest.<\/p>\n

Luca Bianchi, director of Svimez, comments, ‘The good news is that the South has risen to the challenge of the NRRP, in terms of both spending capacity and project implementation. However, it remains to be seen whether the NRRP has brought about structural change in the country’s growth, particularly in the South, or whether we risk taking a step backwards once the funds have run out.’ There is no shortage of doubts.<\/p>\n

But, anyone familiar with Southern Italy and its entrepreneurs cannot fail to notice a certain positive dynamism, quite apart from the effects of public spending. In many companies, generational change has driven innovation and improved the quality of products and services. It has also fostered a willingness to enter new markets, including overseas ones. However, the entrepreneurial landscape is still rather patchy:\u00a0 there are individual initiatives, some of which are highly promising, in certain areas, while most others remain stagnant and underdeveloped.<\/p>\n

Investments in the industrial sector stand out in Campania, Puglia and eastern Sicily, particularly in metalworking and cutting-edge sectors such as avionics,\u00a0 pharmaceuticals and\u00a0 agri-food (including wine production) and\u00a0 services.\u00a0 \u2018If investments are made, the business landscape responds,\u2019 says Bianchi.<\/p>\n

Speaking at the association\u2019s centenary assembly, Maria Cristina Busi Ferruzzi, president of Confindustria Catania<\/strong>, highlighted the region\u2019s leadership in patents and Catania\u2019s contribution of 23 per cent to Sicily\u2019s GDP (Il Sole 24 Ore, 23 June). \u2018The Milan of the South\u2019 is what the city liked to call itself until the early 1980s, emphasising its entrepreneurial dynamism. Then the world of public procurement and the sector\u2019s major companies fell into crisis.\u00a0 Organised crime has had a negative impact on entrepreneurship, as in many other parts of the south.\u00a0 And now, we are starting afresh by looking to industry, our relationship with the university\u00a0 and the opportunities offered by the digital and knowledge economies.\u00a0 The aim is a high-tech South that is deeply European and attuned to the geopolitical developments in a Mediterranean region in flux.<\/p>\n

To discuss the development of the South in earnest, we can focus on two key concepts: the first is ‘knowledge’, and the second is ‘market’. Let\u2019s forget bad old habits involving claims for reparation (\u201c\u2026the State, which from the Unification of Italy onwards has humiliated and marginalised the South, must give us\u2026), Neo-Bourbon nostalgia, and welfarist lures (using the \u2018citizenship income\u2019 \u2013 the Italian welfare allowance dependant on income and citizenship \u2013 is merely the latest wrong turn). Let’s think, instead, about productively investing in infrastructure, starting from education (quality schools and universities) and digital networks. And supporting whatever is needed to promote enterprise, productivity and competitiveness<\/strong>, enabling our businesses to grow within new production and technology sectors while expressing their core characteristics of\u00a0 being positive social agents of well-being and change.<\/p>\n

In short, Southern Italy needs to be reimagined as an economic area that is deeply integrated into the European Union and as a dynamic force in the reshaping of the Mediterranean, a region that has become strategically important in the fields of geopolitics and geoeconomics.<\/p>\n

The chances arising from the constantly evolving \u2018knowledge economy\u2019<\/strong> and the \u2018digital economy\u2019<\/strong>, with their implications related to the extraordinary applications of Artificial Intelligence in all industry, services and cultural sectors \u2013 leading to a drastic alteration in terms of time and space \u2013 are precisely those that can situate the South of Italy in a position where seizing economic, civic, environmental and social development opportunities, rather than \u2018making up for delayed growth\u2019, is now the priority.<\/p>\n

This is a new context, both European and international, which requires a broader understanding than the narrow-minded perspectives of localism and clientelist provincialism. At the Confindustria Catania assembly, the two presidents of the Sicilian Region who have been most committed to ‘sound governance of regulations’ and driving private investment were mentioned: Piersanti Mattarella and Rino Nicolosi.<\/p>\n

It’s a context that poses new challenges not only to Brussels and to Rome and Milan, the two Italian capitals where political power and innovative economy reside, but also to public administration bodies and social actors, starting with companies and without neglecting the more progressive and enterprising individuals hailing from the South of Italy.<\/p>\n

Of course, a focal point not merely in geographical, but also in political and economic, terms. In a world where trade routes and power relationships are being redefined, under the thrust of the dramatic events we are experiencing, the push towards a veritable \u2018paradigm shift\u2019 in political relations and social and economic development is accelerating.<\/p>\n

What we need, in fact, is a critical reinterpretation of the many ideas that, recently, have guided the course of globalisation<\/strong> and the digital economy<\/strong>, as well as a plan for a \u2018selective re-globalisation\u2019 that includes reshoring processes aimed at shortening industrial supply chains (length makes them fragile and not very efficient) by relocating them in the heart of industrial Europe, without yielding to the temptation of protectionist notions but rather renovating and relaunching the whole international exchange system under the banner of fair, well-regulated trade. This is precisely where Southern Italy can take on its new role.<\/p>

(Photo Getty Images)<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Southern Italy is growing faster than the Italian average. It is encouraging to read in the business news that it is ‘driving’ the national economy for the fourth year running. Taking a closer look at the figures (ISTAT estimates for 2025), it can be seen that Italy\u2019s GDP increased by just 0.5 per cent, while […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":108510,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[55,56],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-108785","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-corporate-culture"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nThe South is growing, but continues to lose its young people. 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