Istat: 1.304 million people will be employed in Puglia in 2024, with the unemployment rate in single digits for the first time. Bari is on par with Milan.

Istat: 1.304 million people will be employed in Puglia in 2024, with the unemployment rate in single digits for the first time. Bari is on par with Milan. Emiliano and Delli Noci: "We will do more."

2024 ended with 1,304,000 people employed in Puglia, the highest number since 2018. This represents 11,000 more people employed than in 2023, while the employment rate rose to 51.2% and the unemployment rate fell, for the first time in Puglia's economic history, to a single digit: 9.3%.

In this context, the city of Bari stands out as a national leader, with 122,000 people employed and an employment rate rising to 59.7%, 10 percentage points higher than in 2018. In the capital, the unemployment rate fell to 5.1% for the first time, increasingly similar to that of the most powerful Italian city: Milan, where the unemployment rate stands at 5%.

These are the data published today by Istat in its labor market report and in the employment database for Italian regions, which begins the historical series with the new parameters in 2018.

These figures demonstrate Puglia's better performance than the average for Southern Italy.

Puglia's employment rate, at 51.2%, is almost two percentage points higher than that of Southern Italy (49.3%), while the unemployment rate (9.3%) is 2.6 percentage points higher than the average for the South and Islands (11.9%). And this is a good figure, considering that permanent contracts—783,000 in 2024—far outnumber fixed-term contracts—200 in the same year—a 10,000-person increase over the 2023 figure.

The city of Bari strengthens its lead among large Southern Italian municipalities with an employment rate (59.7%) that leaves second-place Catania, which also boasts an employment rate of 51.7%, 8 percentage points behind. And that's not all. Bari's progress demonstrates a remarkable performance: the unemployment rate, already in single digits since 2020, the year of the great pandemic crisis, has dropped by four percentage points compared to 2023 (from 9.1% to 5.1%). In absolute terms, the number of unemployed in 2024 is half that of 2023, and certainly not because they have stopped looking for work, given that the absolute numbers of inactive people remain unchanged over the two years.

"These data," emphasizes Michele Emiliano, President of the Puglia Region, "are evidence of an improvement, but also a stimulus to do more to consolidate them and make our region even more attractive. We are working to make Puglia a national hub of innovation, to stimulate the ideas of our young people and transform them into successful businesses in all markets, and above all to retain them in Puglia, where they were born and trained thanks to a university and research system that has nurtured and strengthened them."

"Today," added Alessandro Delli Noci, Councilor for Economic Development of the Puglia Region, "we are witnessing the results of incentive policies supported by regional incentives such as Program Contracts, PIA, Nidi, TecnoNidi, and many others that have supported and brought businesses and innovation to Puglia and boosted employment. In addition to the more than 41,000 new jobs generated by the €8.4 billion investment in the 2014-2020 program, there are already more than 3,500 new positions required for the implementation of projects under the 2021-2027 program, which began just over a year ago. We are working with all the regional departments, with Puglia Sviluppo, and with other in-house agencies and companies, with social partnerships, the university system, and the banking system, to ensure Puglia becomes increasingly capable of attracting and retaining talent."