Abstract

Following the path started by the Jobs Act, the 2022 Budget law extended the obligation of insurance against interruption or suspension of work to all firms in the trade and services. As from the 1st of January 2022, the coverage of wage supplementation programmes becomes for the first time universal. This can be read also as a lesson from the crises of the last decade that repeatedly obliged to urgent extraordinary extensions of salary safety nets financed by public resources. The positive evaluation of this reform should not hide two critical aspects that will become clearer in their scope as the new structure will mature: the cost for employers and employees, especially in micro and small firms, that will add on top already high social contributions dedicated mainly to pensions; and the different organization foreseen for employers/employees of the industrial sectors, who continue paying contributions to the State and having supplementations paid by the public budget, and those in the trade and services, who pay contributions to categorical or inter-categorical funds and have supplementations paid only by resources collected with no aid by the public. If contributions paid by employers/employees are fair on an actuarial basis, the two structures should be totally equivalent. These two points will deserve attention.