Italy is projected to lose 4.3 million workers within ten years. That number comes from the Rapporto Formazione e Lavoro 2026, published by the Osservatorio Proxima and presented in Rome on June 9, according to the report. It represents 18.3% of the Italian workforce, and the departure won't be gradual: mature cohorts will exit the labour market in a concentrated wave. For every 100 young people aged 15 to 19, there are already 152 people aged 60 to 64 approaching retirement. The pipeline in is a trickle; the pipeline out is wide open.
Artificial intelligence enters this picture at precisely the worst moment. The Proxima report identifies a specific paradox: just as the market structurally has fewer young people to onboard, the technology meant to boost productivity is compressing the very space where that productivity gets learned. Entry-level roles, the jobs where new hires build experience, are the first to be automated. The bottom rung of the ladder is being cut away while the ladder itself gets shorter.
Adult Training Participation: Italy vs EU Average (%)
Adult Training Participation: Italy vs EU Average (%)
Source: Eurostat Adult Education Survey, processed by Osservatorio Proxima, June 2026
Source: Eurostat Adult Education Survey, processed by Osservatorio Proxima, June 2026
The Cost of Missing Training
The report's data, drawn from ISTAT and Eurostat sources, reveals a country that simply isn't preparing. Adult participation in continuing education sits at 29% in Italy, against a European average of 39.5%, according to the Eurostat Adult Education Survey. That gap translates to 3.6 million fewer Italian adults upgrading their skills each year. The estimated annual cost of this training deficit: 26 billion euros, roughly the size of a full budget manoeuvre. A figure that appears in no public accounts. On top of that, Italy is bleeding talent: between 2011 and 2024, approximately 630,000 young people aged 18 to 34 left the country, a human capital loss that CNEL values at 159 billion euros.
AI Adoption Races Ahead, Skills Do Not
Functionally, here's the irony: AI adoption in Italy is actually accelerating. According to ISTAT data from December 2025, the share of Italian companies with at least ten employees using at least one AI technology doubled in a single year, from 8.2% in 2024 to 16.4% in 2025. Businesses are buying the tools. What's missing is the human fabric to use them well, a challenge that runs through every discussion about artificial intelligence and connects directly to the European race for data centres and robotics.
There's also a regulatory deadline that won't move: on August 2, 2026, full obligations under the EU AI Act take effect for high-risk systems, with penalties of up to 35 million euros or 7% of global turnover. For Italian companies, the compliance window is now measured in weeks. Official data is available through ISTAT and the Eurostat Adult Education Survey.
The conclusion is almost obvious to state and extremely hard to act on. For a country losing 4.3 million workers, adult training stops being a welfare programme and becomes industrial infrastructure. Italy can either convert that 26 billion euro hidden cost into genuine investment, or it will face an AI-saturated labour market too old to use the technology and too undertrained to govern it.
