More hours, nearly the same output per hour
Between 2015 and 2025, Italy’s real output grew by 12.6%, and the hours worked in its economy grew by 12.2%. Real output is measured at 2020 prices, so price rises are removed.
That leaves output per hour worked only 0.4% higher than in 2015. Across the EU over the same decade, output grew by 17.1%, hours by 9.2% and output per hour by 7.2%.
The extra hours came from more people in work and from longer working years. The number of people in work rose by 2,493,600, to 26,796,800, and hours per worker rose from 1,688.1 to 1,717.3 a year.
| Measure | 2015 | 2025 | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Real output | 1,741,282 | 1,960,421 | +12.6% |
| Hours worked | 41,026 | 46,017 | +12.2% |
| People in work | 24,303,200 | 26,796,800 | +10.3% |
| Hours per worker | 1,688.1 | 1,717.3 | +1.7% |
| Output per hour | 100.0 | 100.4 | +0.4% |
What output per hour measures
Output per hour is the economy’s real output divided by all the hours worked in it. Eurostat publishes it as an index, with 2015 equal to 100; in 2025 Italy’s stood at 100.4.
It is an average across every sector and every job, not a measure of anyone’s effort or skill. A shift of work towards activities that produce less per hour lowers it even if no one works differently.
It says nothing about pay. Wages, and how they relate to output per hour, are outside these tables.
- THE IDENTITY: real output equals hours worked times real output per hour. In Italy, output grew by 12.6% and hours by 12.2%, which leaves 0.4% for output per hour. It is arithmetic, not an explanation.
- THE AVERAGE: output per hour is the whole economy’s real output divided by all the hours worked in it. It is not a measure of how hard or how well any person works, and it is not pay.
- THE PANDEMIC YEAR: in 2020, output fell by 8.7% and hours by 11.8%, so output per hour jumped even though output itself fell.
So output per hour 0.4% higher than in 2015 does not say that Italians work less hard or less well: it says the economy grew by adding hours, and the hours grew almost as fast as the output.
One identity, one average and one pandemic year, and a reading that forgets any of them says what the source does not.
Three years of falling output per hour
Output per hour fell in each of the last three years: by 2.1% in 2023, 1.1% in 2024 and 0.5% in 2025. It is the only run of more than one yearly fall since Eurostat’s series for Italy was last broken, in 2010.
The index had reached 104.4 in 2020, when hours fell by 11.8% and output by 8.7%. It stood at 104.1 in 2022, before the three falls.
In 2025 output grew by 0.6% and hours by 1.1%. The last three years repeat, in small, the decade: hours rising at least as fast as output.
| Year | Real output | Hours worked | People in work | Output per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2015 | 1,741,282 | 41,026 | 24,303,200 | 100.0 |
| 2016 | 1,766,879 | 41,713 | 24,650,900 | 99.8 |
| 2017 | 1,796,927 | 42,167 | 24,940,800 | 100.4 |
| 2018 | 1,814,845 | 42,584 | 25,194,000 | 100.4 |
| 2019 | 1,825,154 | 42,599 | 25,349,000 | 100.9 |
| 2020 | 1,665,979 | 37,591 | 24,830,100 | 104.4 |
| 2021 | 1,819,503 | 41,440 | 25,069,400 | 103.4 |
| 2022 | 1,908,758 | 43,212 | 25,550,400 | 104.1 |
| 2023 | 1,927,859 | 44,561 | 26,077,700 | 101.9 |
| 2024 | 1,948,386 | 45,516 | 26,509,600 | 100.9 |
| 2025 | 1,960,421 | 46,017 | 26,796,800 | 100.4 |
What these figures do not say
They do not say why. Nothing here measures the size of firms, investment, bureaucracy, the euro, taxes or the ageing of the workforce, and no policy is assessed.
They do not say that Italians work less hard or less well, and they say nothing about pay. Output per hour is an average over the whole economy.
They cover Italy as a whole, not any region, and compare it only with the EU average. None of this is a forecast.
