“Do you have jobs in your country ?”. This is the question asked by a 40-year old man I met in a bar in Italy.
The question itself didn’t surprise me. What surprised me is that it was the first thing he asked after saying “Buongiorno”.
“Do you have jobs in your country ?”. This question has resonated since then in my head like an emergency call sent my someone who lost any hope.
The situation started worsening well before the crisis
What the man described was a personal situation that mimicked some of the evolution we have witnessed for the last 10 years : shops closing, houses that don’t sell, villages losing their inhabitants, industries closing. He had lost his job and was surviving with 800€ a month. He felt fortunate he said because he had no wife and no kids and could therefore still make a decent living with so little money.
He described the various tribulations he had gone through over the years when the firms he was working for slowly reduced their headcounts before closing down. He described also the production of the area before cheap imports from China changed everything. Basically all sectors were affected and the local industry quickly went down. He gave me the example of Teuco Guzzini, specialized in top-tier bathroom equipment (especially bathtubs and Jacuzzis) which went from 500 employees to slightly over 100. Despite their positioning local Italian manufacturing didn’t resist.
What’s the future of smaller towns and villages
This year something new happened in the village of Potenza Picena were we spend our holidays : some (young) inhabitants of the village decided to leave the village and to emigrate to Australia. Like 100 years ago when poor Italians left their country to look for a new life in Argentina (some 3 millions Italians between 1857 and 1940), the same happens today again. You may have read the story of the village of Gangi, in Sicily, which sells houses for 1€ which were left abandoned after their owners left the village in search of work.
For those who have not reached an advanced level in their studies, the situation faced at home seems indeed to be dramatic. Less qualified jobs are becoming rarer and rarer and those who graduated escape after their studies to find a job in a larger town.
This is extremely worrying as the local economy can’t be sustained that way. With an ageing population (those who stay are retired) and younger inhabitants leaving for bigger towns, businesses in villages and midsize towns see their market shrinking.
How will the village look like in 30 years from now
I’m frightened to think about the future of Potenza Picena in 20 or 30 years from now. Most of those who are retired today will probably have died. And the younger inhabitants who have graduated will have left the village for a bigger town to find a job. Will there still be someone to live there ?
Businesses will keep closing their doors, unable to face the competition of low-wages countries. The drop in population will make it unattractive for retailers to invest there, further worsening the employment situation.
The consequences will also be disastrous for the real estate market. It shouldn’t be a surprise to you that the ageing of the baby-boom generation will lead in 20-30 years to a greater number of houses and apartments on the market. Offer will explode will demand will remain stable, hence leading to a quick drop of prices.
My take
I’m usually optimistic by nature but I must say I returned very pessimistic from this year’s holiday. Not only did I observe a worrying situation in the small town of Potenza Picena, but I saw also something similar in my home town in France. Same size, same effects. And I don’t see any solution for it.
The machine (the local economy) seems simply to be broken and I’ve no idea how to get it fixed. The only thing that could save us would be a sudden increase in oil price, impeding import from cheap goods from low-wage countries. But even in this scenario (which will not happen before years or even decades), it will take a great amount of energy to restart local economy. Who can guarantee by the way that the know-how of the businesses closed will not be lost forever?
Let me finish with a quote by French poet Jacques Prévert.
« Before, a poor could afford inviting another poor for dinner. Today, no one can even afford to be poor”
The consumption society is about to kill us has had our skin. And Marketing played a role in that. Multinationals wanted to sell at any price consumer goods (last generation TV set, smartphones and other gadgets) to the greatest number, and have contributed to the destruction we are witnessing today. This is a winne-takes-all game where there are in fact very few winners ; a game where most of us do lose : those who are exploited (the workers) to manufacture those goods, and those who consume (in the West). By consuming that way they also consume their lives and run after a dream (“possessing”) that doesn’t exist. Ironically, the press announced last week that Microsoft will be offering a free smartphone to those Chinese workers who accept to leave the company and lose their job. Isn’t that ironic ?
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