Italy's immigration and emigration both soaring, stats agency says

By Alvise Armellini

ROME (Reuters) -The numbers of Italians leaving their country and of foreigners moving in have soared to the highest in a decade, official data showed on Friday, fuelling national concerns about brain drain, economic decline and immigration.

Italy has a right-wing government elected in 2022 on a mandate to curb migrant arrivals, but also has a shrinking population and growing labour shortages, highlighting the need to attract foreign workers.

Meanwhile the country's stagnant economy and low wages - salaries are below 1990 levels in inflation-adjusted terms - have been blamed for pushing many Italians to seek better fortunes abroad.

Last year 382,071 foreigners moved to Italy, up from 378,372 in 2023 and the highest since 2014, statistics agency Istat said. In the same period, 155,732 Italians emigrated, up from 114,057 in 2023 and also the highest since 2014.

The immigration figure beat the previous high for the last decade of 301,000 in 2017, and was well above that period's low of 191,766 from 2020 - the height of the COVID pandemic.

The figure of almost 270,000 nationals emigrating in the two-year period from 2023 to 2024 was up around 40% compared to the previous two years. The two-year immigration figure for that period, of around 760,000, was up 31% from 2021-2022.

The figures are derived from town registry offices, so are unlikely to reflect undocumented migration.

Ukrainians made up the biggest national group among those who arrived in 2023-2024, Istat said, followed by Albanians, Bangladeshis, Moroccans, Romanians, Egyptians, Pakistanis, Argentines and Tunisians.

As for the high number of emigrants, "it is more than plausible" that a significant number were "former immigrants" who moved abroad after acquiring Italian citizenship, Istat said.

The agency also said Italy's poorer south was continuing to depopulate, noting that almost 1% of residents in Calabria, the region with the lowest per capita income, moved to central or northern areas during 2023-2024.

(Reporting by Alvise Armellini, editing by Gianluca Semeraro and Jan Harvey)