Monthly hours of wage subsidies due to COVID-19 in Italy 2020

Between February and September 2020, about 2.8 billion hours in form of wage subsidies were paid in Italy due to the COVID-19 emergency. Wage subsidies are paid in Italy to workers whose working activity has been suspended or reduced. The subsidies are paid by the Italian entities of social security. The month of April recorded the largest amount of hours of wage subsidies, when almost one billion hours were compensated. In terms of number of workers, this amount of hours is estimated to correspond to 5.5 million people.
As a consequence of the rising number of cases, in March the Italian government announced that the country is in lockdown and many non-essential activities had to shut down their operations. Currently, there is no strict national lockdown in the country and measures to limit mobility and large social gatherings are region or province based.