According to a quick survey of industrial output in the first quarter of 2025 conducted by the CONFINDUSTRIA Studies Center (CSC), the big companies belonging to the confederation showed greater optimism than in the final quarter of last year. In fact, 53% of those interviewed expected production to remain stable, 32.5% expected an increase and 14.6% a downturn. This data indicates a perceptible improvement in outlook compared to October-December 2024, when the share of people expecting an upturn was only 26.9%, with those expecting a decrease amounting to 28.4%.
The survey among manufacturers also dwelt on the labor hoarding phenomenon, or the tendency for companies to retain their work forces even during a downturn in production. The survey results show that labor hoarding was practiced by more than a third of respondents (34.7%) while 16.3% of the sample declared having cut back on employees when production decreased. For the remaining half the phenomenon was irrelevant since their companies were not facing a slowdown in manufacturing.
“In spite of geopolitical uncertainties and an ongoing crisis in production” said Lucia Aleotti, CONFINDUSTRIA Vice-President for the Studies Center, “companies are retaining employees primarily in the strategic sectors where expert personnel is harder to find. Nonetheless, we find ourselves in a very delicate situation and without policies aimed at economic expansion we don’t know for how much longer companies will be able to resist letting employees go”.
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