Analysis from Gi Group Holding reveals new talent hubs: two Italian cities, Cremona and Pescara, also stand out in the top 10 emerging European locations
In 2024, approximately 1 in 5 job advertisements (18.6%) out of all those published in Italy concerned the logistics sector. This figure confirms the central role of the sector for the country, with a significant impact in economic, social, and professional opportunity terms. In absolute terms, the sector generated nearly 619,000 job offers in the year, a significant contraction compared to the 700,000 in 2023, but still higher than the 2019-2022 values: they were over 467,000 in 2022, over 342,000 in 2021, and in the order of 217-218,000 in 2019-2020. This is what emerges from the “Logistics – 2025 Europe Workforce Trends” study conducted by Gi Group Holding, the first Italian multinational in the employment sector, in collaboration with Lightcast, a global leader in labor market analysis.
The report highlights how logistics, both in Italy and at a European and global level, is going through a phase of profound transformation, marked by a shortage of talent and skills that underscores the urgency for companies to rethink how they attract and retain talent. This is influenced by complex dynamics: the evolution of supply chains, the emergence of new consumption models, technological development, automation, the aging population, the still wide gender gap in the sector, and the low attractiveness of the sector for women and new generations, all amplified by the persistence of geopolitical tensions. Through an in-depth analysis of these phenomena, the study identifies the strategies with which logistics companies can address and overcome the HR challenges of the present and future.
Emerging Geographies
The report highlights the emergence of new talent hubs that are gradually redesigning and enriching the sector’s geography. Two Italian cities, Cremona and Pescara, also stand out in the top 10 emerging European locations. In the Lombard capital, the concentration of demand – the share of advertisements related to logistics out of the total advertisements published in the area – has in fact increased from 17.5% in 2019 to 22.3% in 2022, reaching 24.7% in 2024 (with almost 6,500 job offers published). A similar trend for Pescara, where the concentration of demand has gone from 14.1% to 17.8% and up to 19.6% in 2024, with over 19,000 advertisements.
China, India, and Latin America advance on the global stage
Globally, logistics is seeing the progressive rise of players like China, which is investing significantly in automation, India, and Latin America, the latter being a region where between 2020 and 2024 job advertisements grew with an annual average of 76.7%, compared to the 19.9% recorded in Europe. Precisely at the European level, employment growth in the sector is overall normalizing, with the boom fueled by e-commerce and supply chain disruptions giving way to a more stable hiring context.
In the United Kingdom, for example, a decrease is expected from 2.2% in the 2018-2023 period to 0.9% in the 2023-2027 period.
Stereotypes and a lack of corporate welfare policies maintain the gender gap
One of the factors that most significantly impacts the shortage of workers and skills is the gender gap, related especially to a still stereotypical perception of the sector – despite technological development reducing the physical demands of the tasks – but also to a lack of corporate policies supporting the family, with for example only 0.5% of companies at the European level providing measures to support childcare management. Looking at the data, in Italy, as in Spain, only 20% of the workforce in logistics is female. Lower values are found for example in Bulgaria, Belgium (both with 82% vs 18%) and Romania (87% vs 13%), while slightly higher shares of female workers, but still in the order of 21-27%, are found in countries such as Poland (21%), France (26%) and the United Kingdom (27%).
How the demand for skills is changing in the country
While skills like /unloading goods, warehousing, packaging and labeling remain fundamental and highly sought-after, the future of the sector, also in Italy, is increasingly played on specialized competencies. Among these, the management of the SAP management system (over 14,000 job postings in Italy in 2024) and supply chain management (+53% in demand 2023-2024 compared to the 2021-2022 period). Cross-functional skills are fundamental, such as communication (over 65,000 job postings), management (over 230,000), and leadership (over 110,000), as well as skills in the area of customer service (more than 49,000 job postings) and sales (over 77,000). The strong increase in demand for skills in Safety Training (+158.7% in 2023-2024 vs 2021-2022) finally underlines the growing attention to health and safety.
Significant is then the surge, also in our country, in the demand for skills in the area of sustainability – Net Zero (+362.4%), sustainable strategies (+344.4%) and sustainable development (+174.6%) – for which logistics now finds itself competing not only with construction or technology companies, but also with players in the green economy, equally searching for profiles with this type of skill, starting with engineering ones.
Increasing trends also for skills in the cyber field, increasingly necessary for the security of supply chains, such as cyber safety (+77.4%), cybersecurity (+27.5%), cyber engineering (+5.2%).
Skills Gap Index: the most difficult skills to find in Italy
Again regarding the demand for skills, the report calculated Italy’s Skills Gap Index, identifying the skills that are most difficult to find in the country compared to other European countries on a scale from 0 (minimum difficulty) to 100 (maximum difficulty). The gap concerns a broad spectrum of skills, from regulation and compliance (92) and business strategy (76) to skills in the area of rail transport (96 – the most difficult to find) and freight transport by land (84) up to industrial engineering competencies (47).
Automation and the impacts on the sector
Regarding technological disruption, the study highlights how the global market for automation in logistics is set to grow rapidly, moving from 17.03 billion dollars in 2023 to 49.19 billion in 2033.
However, despite the news about autonomous supply chains and artificial intelligence-driven solutions, for most companies the challenge today is securing the necessary talent to keep daily operations running. Advanced technologies exist, but their costs and complexity limit large-scale adoption, leaving only the large players the possibility to fully leverage them. And even in the most automated scenarios, the human contribution remains indispensable, to manage, maintain, and adapt systems that are far from being self-sufficient.
“Logistics companies are facing a crucial challenge: bridging the talent and skills gap to face a highly competitive and constantly evolving market,” states Ketty Cestaro, Logistics Division Manager of Gi Group. “From this perspective, it is more necessary than ever for organizations to profoundly rethink their HR strategies, relying on partners who, also thanks to investments in Artificial Intelligence and data-driven processes, can respond promptly to market evolutions. It will also be fundamental to invest increasingly in training, particularly for those managerial figures who will have to manage the complexities related to change management, and in structured employer branding strategies to improve the attractiveness of the sector, especially for the new generations and women. In the coming years, companies will have to prepare for and respond to emerging technological challenges, and to do this it is essential to introduce and develop the digital skills of their teams through structured upskilling paths and evolved search & selection processes. The companies that will be able to combine technology with a new approach to talent management and a vision capable of putting people at the center will be able to successfully face and overcome the challenges posed by technological disruption and market evolution.”
