Long-term Care Workforce in Italy, Supplement C to the NEUJOBS WP D.12.2

In this report we have summarized the characteristics of supply and demand for the long-term care workforce in Italy in the last decade and their expected development for the future. Italy still lacks a well structured system of intervention in favour of the disabled and the elderly in need. Most of the care burden is left to families that cope with it by directly providing informal caregiving or by hiring carers out-of-pocked. The population ageing process will augment sizeably the demand for long-term care in the future, while on the one hand the provision of informal caregiving will probably diminish as a consequence of the increasing participation of women in the labour market, and, on the other hand, the economic crisis has reduced the resources that families can address to hire carers. In addition, the market of carers, currently dominated by cash in hand positions, needs to be regulated.