In the Italian labor market there is a paradox that is repeated timely, year after year, which sees companies looking for staff without finding them. Not due to lack of supply, but of demand: few candidates willing to accept it.
The 2026 ranking: who is really missing
Let’s get straight to the point with the list of the ten most difficult professional figures to find in 2026 according to the thematic observatory of the ELIS National Orientation Center, created together with Skuola.net:
- Construction workers
- Industrial maintenance workers
- Electrical installers
- Welders
- Specialized mechanics
- Plumbers
- Automation technicians
- CNC programmers
- Quality control laboratory technicians
- Public transport drivers
The ranking is drawn up in order of vacancy, i.e. on the basis of the places actually available. At the top is the construction worker, who physically holds up the country’s infrastructure. According to the industrial maintenance worker, a decisive figure in factories: his job is to avoid stopping production lines. Third place for the electrical installer, an increasingly strategic profession in a context in which energy and system safety are central to homes, companies and public infrastructures.
Compared to the 2025 edition, figures such as waiters, retail workers, technicians for photovoltaic systems and fiber optics have dropped out of the top ten, for which the difficulty of finding them seems to be gradually reducing. A sign that, at least in those sectors, the meeting between supply and demand has begun to work.
Almost one in two students says no
The analysis arises from the intersection between the needs of the over 130 companies of the ELIS Consortium (large groups, SMEs, universities and research centers in the digital, energy, large works, finance and transport sectors) and the data of agencies such as Gi Group, Manpower, Randstad and Umana, integrated with the statistics of the SIISL Platform of the Ministry of Labor and with the periodic studies of Unioncamere and Confcommercio.
The picture that emerges does not concern a single sector or a temporary situation, because the deficiency is systemic, and the main issue does not seem to be technical but cultural.
Almost 48.9% of high school students declare that they exclude technical professions a priori, a percentage that has grown by almost 20% compared to the previous year. Almost one in two, before even understanding what to do when they grow up, has already closed a door.
The prejudice that costs work
Today three out of four job offers concern technical and/or practical professions, the fact is that over 40% of young people reject them out of hand. Not out of incompetence, nor out of laziness, almost always due to the social perception that we have of technical professions, which are still associated with the idea of second best, of toil without prospects and of little prestige.
Added to this is an element that overturns the perspective: while many theoretical-cultural professions, still preferred by young people today, will presumably be increasingly affected by the spread of artificial intelligence, technical professions seem destined to maintain a central role precisely because they are linked to operational skills, field interventions and responsibilities that are difficult to automate.
Concept also underlined by Pietro Cum, CEO of ELIS:
The projections of Anthropic, one of the big names in Artificial Intelligence, foresee an extremely reduced impact of AI, especially on technical professions, which are also extremely popular on the market. One more reason to rediscover these professions, too often considered a second-best choice, when in fact they are indispensable to the country and of great satisfaction, including economic, for those who carry them out.
The mismatch confirmed by Unioncamere
The problem does not only concern manual trades. According to Unioncamere’s Excelsior information system, 47% of the professional figures expected for 2025 are considered unobtainable. The difficulty grows further for ITS Academy graduates, with over 57% of profiles missing. Italian companies have planned over 4.4 million hires, but almost one in two remains difficult to fill. A number that alone should make anyone on the threshold of an educational choice reflect.
Train earlier, orient better
Among companies, the creation of academies dedicated to training the “unfindable” starting from scratch is becoming increasingly widespread, and the tendency to build professionalizing supply chains (such as the “Professional Schools” of the District Italy project) with the task not only of training the workers of tomorrow, but also of orienting those who are still in training and must make decisive choices for the future. The point is not to convince young people to give up their ambitions, but rather to help them understand where those ambitions, whether for stability, growth and long-term work, are most likely to truly come true.
Sources: elis.org / skuola.net
