Digitalisation and the Labour Market: Studying Territorial Disparities in Southern Italy

Digitalisation has redefined the professional skills required in the labour market, creating a growing demand for digital skills, both advanced and basic. In Italy, there are still significant shortages, which are particularly pronounced in some areas. The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between digital innovation in enterprises and digital skills in the workforce through a complementary perspective, focusing on the South of Italy and identifying common trends and territorial specificities. The final objective is to outline the digital profile of the southern regions, highlighting the digital skills mismatch within them and identifying possible areas of intervention to reduce it. The study begins with an overview of the main policies and measures implemented to strengthen and promote innovation and the digitalisation of the production system, as well as the digital skills of the workforce. It then analyses active labour market policies and interventions to support the training needs of firms and workers, trying to understand their role in the territories. In the second part, the study presents an empirical analysis of the main aspects of the ongoing digitalisation, both on the labour demand and supply side. In particular, the relationship between digital innovation by firms and the workforce is examined along three dimensions: the adoption of digital technologies by firms, the digital skills of workers and the digital skills required by firms. From these three dimensions of analysis, a composite index has been constructed to describe the digital profile of the southern regions, using the Mazziotta-Pareto (MPI) synthesis methodology. The analysis shows that the southern regions are lagging, particularly in the diffusion of digital skills, and that there is a significant mismatch between labour demand and supply, which is particularly pronounced in some regions.