All statistics and forecasts tell us that demographic transformations will silver tinge the face of our society and intensely change the dynamics of welfare, the economy and jobs. While the themes of the Silver Economy seem to be mainly oriented towards the development of investments, an important aspect that needs to be included in the various forecasts is the new complexity and changeability of the world of work. Here, the demands will change, both in terms of the professions needed and the lack of figures, while the working age will increase and the role of Artificial Intelligence in process optimisation and personnel management will become increasingly important for companies.

Job force declines
Various studies that look at the Italian and European contexts, starting from Istat and Eurostat data, show that already in 2030, even if the employment rate were to remain constant, the number of employed people in Italy would drop by 3.2%, i.e. in less than 6 years we will have 730 thousand fewer workers. The situation worsens drastically if we extend the projection to 2040 and then 2050 because the Italian trend is increasingly critical compared to the European average. Looking in detail, already in less than twenty years, the fall in the number of employed people in Italy could reach 13.8% and rise to 20.5% in 2050. Translated into absolute numbers, there will be an estimated 3.1 million fewer workers in 2040 and 4.6 million ten years later. Looking at the last three decades, the impact on the job force has been more than offset by immigration numbers, which were positive and had their main influence in the world of work. But even this trend is changing to the negative, with the numbers of workers coming from abroad decreasing compared to the past. The gap between entrants and leavers of working age will widen due to the increase of those who will be able to retire.

The reduction in the absolute number of workers is then confronted with a change in the skills needed, which are increasingly technical and specialised because they are linked to technological change and require increasingly specific and up-to-date training. Companies will be called upon to include in their policies both upskilling activities, i.e. activities that allow them to expand their knowledge or acquire new knowledge within the scope of their jobs, and reskilling activities, i.e. activities that allow them to develop new skills so as to be able to fill other roles.

This scenario concerns both those who have to enter the world of work and those who have to remain in it, and it highlights several critical issues, first and foremost that of the difficulty of matching supply and demand, which follows the role of the skills of new and old professions also with respect to generational change.

The role of young people
Ours is not a country for young people if, in the last twenty years, it has lost over 800 thousand young people up to the age of 14 (-9.9%) and over 2.6 million 15-34 year-olds (-17.9%). Even in the 35-49 age bracket, there has been a loss of almost 1.4 million residents (-10.4%), while there has been an increase of about 3 million 50-64 year-olds (+28.6%) and 3.1 million over-65s (+28.2%).

In this demographic context, future scenarios concerning the job supply for young people will shrink precisely because of the ageing of workers, i.e. the raising of the working age, which makes them increasingly exposed to the risks of precariousness and low wages.
A phenomenon that should already be countered by sector policies concerning the reduction of young people who are not studying, not working and not in training. These young people are classified as belonging to the NEET category, which stands for Not in Employment, Education or Training. In Italy, in 2022, the rate of this particular category was more than 7 percentage points higher than the European average, but it would be wrong to think that it includes only disaffected young people, because almost two thirds declare themselves available for work.

And it is precisely education that plays a central role in fostering their participation in the job market if, again in 2022, the employment rate of university graduates aged 25-64 is 30 points higher than that of those with no more than a secondary school diploma (83.4% vs. 53.5%) and 11 points higher than that of high school graduates (72.4%).

Young people are still highly sought after in various sectors, which is why competition between companies to attract and retain staff will become increasingly fierce. These will be called upon to put in place actions that lead to greater attractiveness that meets the emerging needs of the younger generation. An attractiveness that can be made up of both the guarantee of a fair salary but also contractual stability and a better professional position, as well as corporate welfare and inclusiveness—all in a sustainable vision of the relationship between life and work.

Artificial Intelligence between new and old professions
In the coming years, the progressive shortage of jobs will affect crucial sectors for the Italian economy, such as industry, construction and services, with the risk of putting a brake on the growth of the overall economy and, as a result of the decrease in the number of active workers, the intergenerational pact of contributions to the social security system could also come into crisis, calling into question the sustainability of the Italian pension system.

In this scenario, Artificial Intelligence presents itself as a resource to compensate for the shrinking workforce through its ability to increase the speed of our production processes.

In particular, generative AI, or GenAI, which focuses on the creation of new content, such as text, images, music, audio and video, presents various opportunities to implement companies’ processes. A trend also signalled by the latest Deloitte research State of Generative AI in the Enterprise: Now Decides Next, a quarterly study by the Deloitte AI Institute on the actions taken by enterprises on GenAI adoption and possible impacts.

In early 2024, 47 per cent of companies increased the pace of GenAI adoption and integration into their processes. They have done so by expanding to all business functions, making greater investments in technology infrastructure and implementing corporate resources.

In the area of human resources, then, for 75 per cent of companies, generative AI will bring about changes in their talent strategies within the next two years, while in the next 12 months 39 per cent of companies expect to increase their workforce through the integration of GenAI into their processes.

These scenarios therefore point to a path in which Artificial Intelligence becomes an increasingly important resource to offset demographic imbalances and find new paths away from the many crises predicted for the future.