Today’s strike, December 12, is the latest in a long series of national strikes that have occurred this year, but which are actually decreasing compared to previous years. Italy continues to strikebut he no longer really knows how to measure How much. It is the paradox that accompanies every attempt to describe the country’s conflict: while the Strike Guarantee Commission records 1,242 proclamations between 1 January and 12 December 2025 alone, the national statistical infrastructure that should encompass them stopped more than fifteen years ago: the ISTAT historical series, the longest and most detailed ever produced on the topic, was interrupted in 2009. It is a heavy void, because everything we know today comes from a single source, important but partial. And what little we can observe tells us one thing that is clear: there are fewer and fewer strikes in Italy.
In the decade 2014–2024 the number of proclamations decreased steadily, after the peak in 2017; and 2025, with its 1,242 proclamations recorded so far, fits perfectly within this trajectory.
Who is registering strikes today: why the Guarantee Commission is not enough
The Strike Guarantee Commission only records strikes in essential public services. These are activities that guarantee fundamental constitutional rights – life, health, safety, mobility, education, communication, assistance – and for this reason their perimeter does not coincide with the entire labor market. This leaves out a large part of the real conflict such as, for example, various private companies. Because in Italy there is no general obligation to communicate strikes outside of essential public services.
In Italy, strikes are decreasing, the last decade has been declining
From what we can observe, however, the trend is clear: there are fewer strikes than in the past.
The latest consolidated report of the Commission, referring to 2024, speaks of 1,633 proclamations, approximately 31 per week, and of 1,080 strikes actually carried out, approximately 21 per week. The series of proclamations, available since 2014, describes a wave movement but with a clear decline in the last decade: from 2,048 in 2014 to the peak of 2,448 in 2017, until the decline in 2024.
Alongside the structurally more conflictual sectors – local public transport and air transport, which remain stable at the top year after year – a very different sector emerges: the healthcare. In the National Health Service the number of strike proclamations and days shows marked oscillationswith years almost devoid of mobilizations followed by sudden increases. It is an irregular trend that contrasts with the constancy of transport, and describes a type of conflict more linked to specific crises than to structural continuity. In other words: some sectors strike cyclically, others perpetually.
The regions where strikes occur the most: Lombardy, Campania, Lazio
The territorial differences reveal another internal fracture. In 2024 the proclamations are concentrated in Lombardy (213), Campania (175) e Lazio (149). But it is the North that leads in terms of days actually affected by strikes: Lombardy with 82, Emilia-Romagna with 58, Tuscany with 51. The discrepancy with the national total derives from the weight of strikes of national importance, which are not accounted for in the regional rankings. It is another sign of the complexity of the data: it can be read, but it must be held together piece by piece.
1242 strike announcements in 2025: a figure that is still fragmented
2025 confirms the trend, at least as far as emerges from the partial data. There is not yet an official and complete report: the information must be extracted directly by “scraping” the data from the Commission portal. Translated for those who don’t know technical language: you have to manually “download” and reorganize every single strike recorded online, one by one, because there is no public dataset directly accessible. As of December 12, 2025, there have been 1,242 proclamations.
The sectors where strikes occur the most are always the same: local public transport, air transport and regions and local autonomies. The healthcare sector went on strike less than last year, in 2024 there were 137 strike proclamations while this year – up to 12 December – there were 81. Rail transport, on the other hand, is in 7th place in this ranking with 52 proclamations, last year there were 119.
The 2025 strike map shows a conflict strongly concentrated in the most urbanized regions. We excluded national strikes and those without geographical indication from the count; the municipal strikes were traced back to the region they belonged to using the ISTAT classification of municipalities.
As for 2024, Lombardy is in the lead, followed by Campania and Lazio, while the weight of Tuscany, Emilia-Romagna and Puglia confirms how the protest is distributed above all where public services and territorial structures are denser.
Because we cannot compare Italy to other countries
Finally, international comparison is an almost impossible exercise. ILOSTAT, the International Labor Organization database, only accepts methodologically standardized data. Italy appears until 2007, the last year in which ISTAT produced a coherent and comparable series. We’ve been off the charts ever since. Not because there are too many or too few strikes, but because our data is not compatible with international standards.
