How many farm workers are there in Italy and where do they work?

Italy has 1,019,177 employed farm workers, according to the INPS (Italy's social security institute) for 2024. Almost nine in ten are on a fixed-term contract: 890,368 out of 1,007,519 according to the CREA (Italy's council for agricultural research), which analyses the same INPS data. More than one worker in three is foreign (39.7%) and 34.5% work in the South.

How many there are

In 2024 the INPS counts 1,019,177 employed farm workers, +2.4% on the year before (995,163). The farms that hire them number 167,804, 1.1% fewer than in 2023 and 9.0% fewer than in 2019.

In 2025 farm worker job positions total 1.018 million, -0.1% (INPS, Annual Report 2026). Detailed 2025 data are expected in November 2026.

Seasonal and permanent workers

Fixed-term workers (OTD, operai a tempo determinato) are hired for short jobs, such as harvesting or the grape harvest. Permanent workers (OTI, operai a tempo indeterminato) have a contract with no end date. In 2024, according to the CREA:

• 890,368 OTDs, equal to 88% of the total;
• 117,151 OTIs;
• 87,740,891 days worked by OTDs, that is about 99 each (calculated on CREA data).

The share of OTDs ranges from 74.2% in the North-West to 95.7% in the South.

Foreign workers number 400,024, or 39.7% of the total (CREA, 2024). Of these, 369,379 are on fixed-term contracts. For the INPS the share in 2025 is 42%: these are two sources and two different years.

Where they are

34.5% of farm workers work in the South, 24.3% in the North-East, 15.6% in the Islands, 14.0% in the Centre and 11.6% in the North-West. Four regions hold more than four in ten: Apulia (14.9%), Sicily (13.4%), Emilia-Romagna (9.6%) and Calabria (8.0%).

30.2% are women, 22.3% are under 30 and 36.1% are 50 or older (INPS, 2024).

The workforce is changing shape

According to the ISTAT (Italy's national statistics institute), in 2025 work in agriculture, forestry and fishing falls by 0.5%, measured in annual work units (ULA, unità di lavoro). Self-employed workers fall by 2.2% and employees rise by 2.3%. The INPS also sees fewer self-employed farm workers: 414,746 in 2024, -1.9%.

Are they easy to find?

In the Excelsior bulletin of Unioncamere (Italy's chambers of commerce) and the Ministry of Labour, primary sector businesses say they struggle to find part of the workers they look for:

• September 2025: 43.7% of the 43,850 hires planned in the primary sector; for farmers and skilled farm workers 46.0% of 10,490;
• April 2026: 38.9% of 14,510 hires of farmers and skilled farm workers, against 44.6% for all occupations.

This is the businesses' own view of the hires planned in the month, not a count of jobs left unfilled. In April 2026 the share for farm occupations is below the average of all sectors; in October 2026 the average is 43.6%. These data are not enough to speak of a shortage in numbers.

Where farms look

Employers have different channels in front of them. There are personal networks and word of mouth, public job centres, cooperatives, employment agencies and online job boards.

One limit applies to all of them: recruiting labour to place it with third parties under exploitative conditions is a crime (art. 603 bis of the criminal code, as rewritten by law 199/2016).

How many people will you need next season? Post the job and get it to people looking for work in farming.