Fake Self-Employed Workers Rise in Italy: The “Dependent Contractors” Crisis

True self-employment decreases, but disguised self-employment increases. Today
just two out of ten workers are self-employed, compared to around three out of ten at the beginning of the 2000s. But among the self-employed there are more and more workers who operate in a gray area: they have a VAT number or a collaboration contract, but depend almost exclusively on a
client only and do not have control over central elements of their activity, such as rates, working times or tools used. They are what are often referred to in jargon as “fake self-employed”.

Who are the “dependent contractors” and how many are there in Italy

To group these workers, the International Labor Organization (ILO) introduced the category of dependent contractor. These are workers «who have contractual agreements of a commercial nature (but not an employment contract) to provide goods or services to or through another economic unit. They are not dependent on that economic unit, but depend on it for the organization and execution of work, income or access to the market. They are workers employed for profit, who depend on another entity that exercises control over their production activities and directly benefits from the work they carry out”, according to the ILO definition. In Italy, workers who find themselves in this situation are 494 thousand and represent 18.5% of the total self-employed. It’s the one who does the math‘Inapp (National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies) in the study «Employees or independents? The different degrees of freedom of self-employment”.

The profile: under 30, employed in the tertiary sector

Inapp’s analysis, carried out through data from the Plus survey on a sample of 45 thousand people, traces an identikit of these workers. SI am under 30, employed in the tertiary sector (call centers, deliveries, cleaning, business services), often paid less than their hired colleagues and with more work discontinuity than fixed-term workers.

For most of them, self-employment is an obligatory choice. 48% declare that they have opted for self-employment at the request of their client or client. If we add to these those who declare that they took up their profession because “there were no other job opportunities”, it emerges that for six dependent contractor out of ten, self-employment is an imposition or a necessity, certainly not a lifestyle choice.

New protections are needed

Inapp highlights that these are «workers who are burdened by business risks without the balance of full organizational autonomy and who find themselves carrying out work in some respects very similar to that of
employed workers, but without the protections provided for subordinate work”.

Some progress has recently been made. European Parliament and Council to try to provide greater guarantees to platform workers they approved the directive 2024/2831which obliges member states to introduce a presumption of subordination into their laws when elements indicating control and direction are identified. The Twenty-Seven will have to implement it by December 2026.

Something has also changed at a national levelthe related work 203/2024 opens the way to the possibility of recognizing more clearly the work relationships that are halfway between autonomy and subordination. «But it would be necessary to continue defining a regulatory framework capable of recognizing new forms of employment status – observes Inapp -, which go beyond the rigid distinction between subordinate and self-employed work, creating protections and guarantees for all subjects beyond the contractual typologies and regardless of the legal qualification of the work activity».