Membership Info

Industry insights and figures Employment activities

Updated up to 2008 → 2020
Operating margin
3.4 %
▼ -0.7pp
2020
Companies
1028
2020

Key insights Employment activities

Actionable signals from current data
IT
Average operating result: 3.4% of revenue (2020).
Personnel costs: 86.4% of revenue (2020).
Number of companies: 1,028 (2020).

Sector outlook Employment activities

Automated analytical commentary based on the most recent Eurostat figures

Industry overview

The Employment activities sector across Italy comprises approximately 1,028 enterprises employing about 351,961 people and generating €12.0 bn in net turnover in 2020. The average enterprise size is – employees per firm. This is a useful yardstick when assessing whether your own operation sits within the typical scale band of the sector.

Profitability

With a modest operating margin of 3.4% of revenue in 2020, the sector reports €407 M of gross operating surplus (Eurostat's EBITDA-equivalent, before depreciation). This figure provides the headline benchmark against which an individual operator can sanity-check their own bottom line, values significantly below indicate cost or pricing pressure, those above suggest competitive advantage worth defending.

Cost structure

Personnel costs are the dominant cost driver in Employment activities, absorbing 86.4% of revenue. Cost of revenue accounts for 11.9% and energy purchases –. The labour-intensive nature of activities in this sector means that productivity gains and wage discipline have an outsized effect on margin. Note that small percentage shifts in labour cost ratios translate quickly into operating result.

Trend & trajectory

Over the period 2008 to 2020 the operating margin moved from -4.0% to 3.4% (+7.4 percentage points), an encouraging upward trajectory. Sectors with stable or improving margins tend to reflect successful pass-through of input costs and disciplined capacity management; declining margins typically point to either over-supply or a structural cost squeeze that warrants strategic review.

Costs by category Employment activities

Sector average % of revenue
Log in to see the full 13-year history
Cost structure for Employment activities in IT, 2008 to 2020, expressed as percentage of revenue.
Revenue / costs 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 2015 2016 2017 2018 2019 2020
Total revenue 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%
Personnel costs (total) 87.7% 85.7% 84.4% 87.0% 87.6% 88.0% 85.8% 85.7% 85.8% 86.6% 87.3% 84.7% 86.4%
Gross wages 63.7% 62.1% 61.5% 63.4% 63.9% 63.9% 61.2% 61.7% 62.5% 62.2% 62.5% 60.9% 61.9%
Social and pension contributions 24.0% 23.6% 22.8% 23.5% 23.8% 24.1% 24.6% 24.0% 23.3% 24.4% 24.8% 23.8% 24.5%
Other costs 16.3% 14.5% 13.8% 9.8% 9.9% 10.0% 10.8% 10.4% 9.6% 8.4% 10.7% 11.2% 10.2%
Gross operating surplus (EBITDA) -4.0% -0.2% 1.9% 3.2% 2.5% 2.0% 3.4% 3.9% 4.6% 5.1% 2.0% 4.1% 3.4%
Depreciation 3.6% 5.1% 4.2% 3.8% 4.1% 3.8% 3.6% 3.2% 3.3% 2.8% 2.7% 3.0% 3.5%
Operating result (EBIT) -7.6% -5.3% -2.3% -0.6% -1.6% -1.8% -0.3% 0.7% 1.3% 2.3% -0.7% 1.1% -0.1%

Source: Eurostat Structural Business Statistics (latest available year).

Operating result over 13 years

Sector average % of revenue
Average
2.4%
Peak
5.06%
2017
Low
-4.03%
2008
Latest
3.4%
2020

Cost mix evolution

How costs have shifted as a share of revenue

Cost distribution as % of revenue Employment activities (2020)

Recommended next steps

Based on the latest available data for Employment activities