Italy struggles to cope with shortage of pizza makers because they are "too proud to do the job"

Mail Online ^ | May 9, 2013 | Hannah Roberts

[Fiji Hill]

It was once an honorable artisan trade passed from generation to generation.

But despite record unemployment levels, today’s Italians are too proud to make pizza.

In the land that invented the calzone, the capricciosa and the margarita, there is a severe shortage of skilled pizza makers or pizzaioli.

At least 6,000 are desperately needed, according to new figures from business federation FIPE.

But despite youth unemployment of 35 per cent the young Italians no longer want to do the job. Because of the long hours and low pay it is seen as work for immigrants.

Enrico Stoppani,of the Italian Federation of Merchants said: "young people see hospitality as a low grade job.

"Even when they do go into the industry they want to be a chef in a five star hotel not a pizzaiolo."

Foreigners are increasingly taking their place in Italy’s 50,000 pizzerias, with Egyptians emerging as a dominant force among the estimated 240 thousand pizzaioli, who earn as little as 1000 Euro a month.

[Fiji Hill]

Could it be that young Italians would rather live off the welfare state than craft pizzas, an art that Italians once considered prestigious?

[Pollster1]

But despite youth unemployment of 35 per cent the young Italians no longer want to do the job. Because of the long hours and low pay it is seen as work for immigrants.

When people would rather demand welfare (not charity, because the welfare funds are taken from their productive countrymen by force) than do a productive task, welfare is paying too well. When people would rather demand disability payments than do a productive task they are capable of performing, (1) it is too easy to get on disability, and (2) disability is paying too well.

Italy needs to reform their safety net - it's not supposed to be a hammock!

[massgopguy]

Wow, the city I live in is 5.1 square miles and has 25 Pizza places. Be good or be gone.

[Tax-chick]

Because of the long hours and low pay it is seen as work for immigrants.

A lot of that going around here, too. When you don't have to work to eat (have housing, party, have a cell phone), why work?

[MrEdd]

Or, (far more likely) could it be that Italy has a Byzantine labyrinth of regulations, licenses, and fees, which erect a wall preventing young people from any realistic opportunities to go into the business for themselves once they get a handle on the trade?

Are there nigh permanent walls to advancement or entrepreneurial endeavors within the cadaver of the European Union’s bureaucracy? Is this not one of the central causes of the EU collapse rather than a symptom of laziness on the part of the youth in question.

When some municipality sends cops out to shut down a couple of kids with a lemonade stand it still makes the news here because of the novelty. In the EU that has been the norm for decades.

I forsee a Louis the Fourteenth solution sweeping Europe.

[quantim]

But would they pick lettuce for $50 an hour?

[buffaloguy]

I frequently buy forty large pizzas per month. Good money to be made in the states.