Postcards from an Italy that doesn’t make the news

People protest, go on strike, demonstrate, take to the streets, block ring roads, close schools, block roads; sometimes they set fire to rubbish bins, sometimes they smash shop windows, sometimes they seek confrontation, but the common thread, one way or another, is always the same: to bring everything to a standstill, or at least to try to, in an attempt to make the headlines – against the war economy, against the cost of living, against low wages and, of course, against Israel, the new ‘cherry on the cake’ of any self-respecting protest. Italy on the protest trail makes the news, grabbing the front pages of newspapers and the opening segments of news programmes, as well as capturing our attention. Italy’s progress, on the other hand, tends not to make the news. And whilst thousands of people, armed even with good intentions, choose to voice their discontent (the proportion of striking civil servants yesterday did not reach 7 per cent, according to figures from the Ministry of Public Administration), it may be natural to wonder whether the issues raised in the streets are a true reflection of the state of our country.

We are not referring to the figures – which are slightly off the mark – bandied about by the trade union that organised yesterday’s general strike, the USB (the USB conflates military spending with arms purchases; it attributes price rises of between 30 and 50 per cent to everyday goods without clarifying which basket of goods it is referring to; calls on the government to do more for young people in the very same press release in which it calls for more to be done for pensioners; calls for higher wages in the very same press release in which it criticises other trade unions for seeking an agreement on representation and wages – one of the avenues through which higher pay is sought; and calls for the defence of oppressed peoples whilst forgetting to call for Ukrainian flags to be flown in the streets). We are referring to an interesting document that paints a picture of an Italy that makes fewer headlines than the Italy that protests.

The document is published by Istat – not exactly a propaganda bulletin from the government – and is entitled “Bes 2026”. Like every year, it uses a number of indicators to measure the state of well-being in our country, highlighting the actual changes in Italians’ living conditions. Is everything really going wrong? Is Italy really a disaster? Let’s see what the figures say. The ‘Bes’ report analyses 148 well-being indicators, 132 of which are comparable with the previous year. In the latest survey, 54 indicators have improved compared with the previous year, 55 have remained stable, and 23 have worsened.

Looking at the long term, however, out of 133 comparable indicators, 70 have improved, 24 have worsened and 39 show no clear trend. Point number one: did Italian households really continue to lose purchasing power in 2024 and 2025 as well? Istat reports that average disposable income per capita rose by 2.4 per cent in 2025, following a 3 per cent increase in 2024, and, taking inflation into account, incomes rose by 2.2 per cent in real terms over the two-year period. Do households really feel increasingly poorer? In 2023, 33.9 per cent of households reported that their financial situation had worsened over the past year. In 2024, the figure was 29.5 per cent. In 2025, it fell to 26.2 per cent.

Is the job market really a disaster in Italy? In 2025, the employment rate among those aged 20 to 64 reached 67.6 per cent, half a percentage point higher than in 2024, and the proportion of workers forced to work part-time because they could not find full-time employment fell from 8.5 per cent to 7.7 per cent in 2025. Have rising housing costs really placed an enormous strain on household incomes? According to Istat, in 2025 the proportion of people living in households where housing costs exceed 40 per cent of net household income remained at around 5 per cent, and Istat attributes this stability partly to the increase in the purchasing power of household incomes. Finally, are Italians really becoming less and less satisfied with their lives? In 2025, Istat also reports, 47.6 per cent of the population aged 14 and over rate their lives between eight and ten: 1.3 percentage points higher than in 2024.

The improvement is particularly evident among the elderly, with an increase of almost three points among both those aged 65–74 and those over 75. Furthermore, the report on the well-being of Italians also provides other data that often goes unnoticed in daily news coverage, such as the fact that Italy continues to record a homicide rate below the European average; that burglaries have more than halved compared with ten years ago; and that Italians have never lived so long, with life expectancy set to reach an all-time high of 83.7 years in 2025.

All these figures, of course – which you will find published in full in today’s edition of Il Foglio – are not to be used to downplay the scale of the demonstrations, protests and strikes, whether those of yesterday or those of tomorrow; rather, they can help us understand that alongside the Italy that is protesting, there is another Italy that is improving, and which deserves to be regarded as a picture of the country no less truthful than that presented by the Italy that is protesting.