The debate on the legal minimum wage in Italy seems to be stuck on a symbolic figure: 9 euros per hour.
But if we shift our gaze from the ‘likes’ on social media to the INPS and Eurostat reports, we discover that the question is not how much we want to pay workers, but how much our economic system is really able to sustain without collapsing under the weight of its own inefficiency.

The 9 euro mirage: an (honest) comparison with Europe

Many supporters of the EUR 9 threshold cite Europe as a monolithic block. However, the EU Directive 2022/2041 does not impose a figure, but suggests sustainability parameters: the minimum wage should be around 60 per cent of the gross median wage of a country.

INPS data in hand, the median Italian wage hovers just above 12 euros per hour. Doing the maths:

• Sustainable threshold according to the EU(60 per cent): about EUR 7.50/hour.
• Opposition policy proposal: 9.00 euro/hour(over 75% of the median).

Such a leap would put us in a world ranking together with Costa Rica and Colombia, the only OECD countries with such an unbalanced ratio between minimum and median. To impose such a threshold by law would risk triggering an inflationary spiral on final prices or, even worse, pushing thousands of small businesses towards closure or into illegal moonlighting.

The geographical taboo and the tax wedge paradox

Then there is a glaring geographical omission. The cost of living is not homogeneous along the peninsula: EUR 9 per hour in Vibo Valentia has a radically different purchasing power and impact on corporate labour costs than in Busto Arsizio or Milan.
Ignoring this asymmetry means risking the industrial desertification of the Mezzogiorno, where marginal productivity is often lower, making regular employment uneconomic.

Added to this is the drama of the tax wedge. In Italy, between INPS contributions (about 30 per cent borne by the company), INAIL and provision for severance pay, to pay 9 euros gross, the entrepreneur spends almost twice as much. The real issue is not just ‘raising the minimum’, but lowering the state’s cost on labour. As long as the difference between what the company pays out and what the worker receives remains an abyss, no legal threshold will be able to generate real welfare.

Corporate ‘dwarfism’ is the real obstacle to growth

Why can France and Germany afford higher wages?
The answer lies in our industrial fabric.
Italy is the country of micro-enterprises: over 95 per cent of our companies have fewer than 10 employees. This chronic dwarfism prevents economies of scale, limits investment in research and development, and consequently blocks productivity.

Small Italian companies are often squeezed between suffocating bureaucracy and high credit costs. In this context, the EUR 9 minimum wage would not act as a stimulus, but as a guillotine for those operating in low value-added sectors. The real challenge is not to set a price by law, but to incentivise mergers and business combinations to enable our companies to become big enough to pay better wages.

The real sick: Productivity (the merciless comparison)

Wages are, by economic definition, the remuneration of wealth produced. From 2005 (let the indicator be 100) to the present, Italian productivity has remained substantially stationary (100.3), while our competitors have run:

• Germany: 115.8
• France: 108.7
• EU average: 117.8
• Spain: 118.6.

We are the only major European country where real wages have fallen in the last 30 years.
But it is hardly the badness of entrepreneurs: it is that if output per hour worked does not grow, there is no room to increase pay without making a loss.
To demand increases by decree without structural reforms is like trying to run a car without fuel: the engine will melt.

The solution

If the goal is to raise the median wage and not just put up an election flag, the way is through second-level (company or territorial) bargaining. This tool allows wage increases to be linked to real objectives: efficiency, quality and innovation.

It is ‘tailor-made’ bargaining where the state has to take a step back, limiting itself to:

1. Ensure full de-taxation: productivity bonuses must end up entirely in the workers’ pockets, without the treasury retaining a part of it.
2. Valuing merit: Rewarding companies that invest in training and new technologies (e.g. with ‘Industry 5.0’).
3. Follow the German model: In Germany, the minimum wage is monitored by an independent commission of experts (employers, trade unions and academics) that adjusts it according to economic trends, not election cycles.
   

Less slogans, more reality

The 9 euro minimum wage narrative resembles an attempt to cure a horse fever by rigging the thermometer. We can decide by decree that the starting point is higher, but if we do not change the structure of our production apparatus, the only result will be to send it off the rails.

Europe and Italian workers are not asking for slogans, but for reforms that make work more productive and less taxed.
Wages are a reflection of the wealth produced: to have heavier pay envelopes, we must go back to producing value, not just distributing subsidies. Less state in the contract, more state in lowering taxes and encouraging business growth.