Italians Will Tell You Not to Move to Italy. They’re Wrong.
They’re describing their Italy; not the one you’ll live in.
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Through the eyes of someone simply visiting the country, Italy is almost a utopian ideal. The weather, the food, the beaches, the beautiful people, the style.
It’s hard to understand why anyone would choose to leave this place. Yet, I did more than 22 years ago, and roughly 200,000 young Italians do the same each year.
What’s more bizarre are the reactions you get when you mention your intention to move to Italy. “Ma sei matto?” (Are you crazy?) “Ma perché vuoi venire qui? Io me ne andrei domani se potessi.” (Why do you want to come here? I’d leave tomorrow, if I could.)
This is the reaction most foreigners considering a move to Italy will get when talking to locals. It probably has spooked you.
This is not a matter of “tourists go home.” They are not lying to protect their open-air museum cities and pristine beaches. They say the same things to other Italians considering a come back.
Their reaction is universal. Raised eyebrows. A pause. “Sei sicuro?” (Are you sure?)
They mean well. They’re telling the truth. But it’s their truth, not yours.
Italian Salaries Are Actually That Bad
Two things you need to know about Italians. First, the national sport is not soccer. It’s complaining about the country. Second, they do have good reasons to complain.
Let’s start there:
Between 1990 and 2020, Italy was the only EU country to see wages go down.
The average salary in Italy is roughly €33K per year, about €1,650 a month take home.
For every euro an employer spends on you, almost two-thirds goes to taxes and social contributions (Italy consistently ranks among the highest tax wedge countries in the OECD).
So when an Italian tells you “here you work and you don’t see the money,” they mean it almost literally. From their perspective, la vita in Italy is not so dolce.
Why Italians Are Leaving Italy
Stipendi fermi da 30 anni (salaries stuck for thirty years) is one factor. Lack of jobs in much of the country is another.
Youth unemployment is still extremely high by European standards. In southern regions like Campania, Sicily, and Calabria, it can exceed 35–40%.
Nearly half of young Italian workers are in a contratto a tempo determinato (a fixed-term contract with no guarantees of stability).
Add bureaucracy and slow career progression, and it becomes clear why many leave.
It is the reason why I left. I wanted better career opportunities, and Ireland (first) and Canada (then) delivered.
Why This Doesn’t Apply to You
Here’s the part they’re missing: you’re not entering their job market.
If you arrive in Italy with income generated outside of Italy, you invert the entire equation.
You pay roughly the same cost of living as an Italian, 25 to 30% lower than the US overall, and up to 70% lower in smaller towns or the south. (If you’re not sure where to base yourself, here’s a guide on which region of Italy you should move to.)
When you move to Italy, you and your Italian friend are not living in the same country, however. You eat the same food, walk the same streets, shop at the same stores. But you do not live the same lives.
I have a friend in the Marche who earns about €1,400 a month working locally. Rent, bills, groceries; there isn’t much left. Nights out are calculated. Vacations are rare.
A remote worker I know, living ten minutes away, earns a US salary. Same supermarket. Same cafés. Completely different life. Much nicer rental. Dinner out without thinking 2-3 times a week. Frequent travel to European capitals and Croatia. Savings at the end of the month.
In some ways he’s playing the game in hard mode (language barriers, bureaucracy, no local contacts), but in economic terms, he has found the cheat code.
Your Italian friend is telling you the truth about their life. What they can’t see is that yours will look very different.
Who Should Actually Move to Italy
This works for:
Remote employees earning US, Canadian, British, Swiss, or Northern European salaries
Consultants and freelancers with clients outside Italy
Retirees with foreign pensions
People with meaningful savings
Founders running businesses registered elsewhere
It becomes a lot more challenging for:
Someone planning to find a job on the Italian market
Someone without remote income who hopes to figure it out after arriving
Someone who wants an Italian career ladder to climb
Anyone expecting an American-style standard of living in a major city
If you’re in the first group, the country your cousin in Bari is warning you about is not the country you’ll be living in.
The legalities of actually moving to Italy are not as difficult as you’d expect, either. As I explain in my guide on how to move to Italy legally, there are both Digital Nomad and retiree visa options with no caps. Both are relatively easy to get.
“But Isn’t This Just Gentrification?”
It’s a fair question and one I want to address directly.
Gentrification describes wealthier outsiders pricing locals out of neighborhoods that were already vibrant and lived-in. Lisbon, Mexico City, parts of Barcelona. The critique is valid in those places.
Most of the Italy I’m describing faces the opposite situation. The towns where foreign income has a meaningful impact are the ones that have been quietly losing population for decades.
Italy’s interior has lost millions of residents since the 1970s. Schools close. Churches deconsecrate. Business shut down. Houses sit empty until they collapse. The famous “€1 house” schemes exist precisely because no Italian wants to buy them and live there.
Foreign families moving into a Marche hill town aren’t displacing anyone. They’re often the reason the local alimentari (grocery store) stays open another five years, the reason the elementary school stays above the minimum enrollment to keep its doors open, the reason a 400-year-old building gets restored instead of demolished. In some rural towns, the mayor will personally help you with paperwork because each new resident matters. The movie Un mondo a parte more or less directly addresses this.
The places where foreign demand actually does push prices beyond local reach are a small subset: central Florence, parts of the Amalfi Coast, the most photogenic Tuscan villages, central Rome. I’m not recommending those. The whole argument of this newsletter is that the better Italy for new arrivals is also the Italy that genuinely benefits from them.
There’s a real critique buried in here, which is whether tourism-economy towns serve residents or visitors. That’s worth taking seriously. But moving to a depopulating town and actually living there year-round (paying taxes, sending kids to local schools, becoming part of the parrocchia) is the opposite of the tourist economy. It’s what these places need to keep existing.
Is Moving to Italy Right for You?
Before you book your move, run through this checklist:
Can you earn without relying on the Italian job market?
Are you okay with Italian-style housing (smaller apartments, “good enough”) outside the most desirable city centers?
Do you speak some Italian or plan to reach B1? (BTW, my site, Linguetto, can help.)
Can you handle bureaucracy and a slower pace of life?
Are you looking to embrace the Italian life, not escape your current one?
If you answered yes to most of these, Italians are underestimating the quality of life you’ll experience. Smile, thank them, and order another espresso.
They’re not wrong about Italy. They’re wrong about your Italy.
(For a fuller picture of daily life beyond the economics, see my guide on what living in Italy is actually like.)
Frequently Asked Questions
Why do Italians discourage people from moving to Italy?
Because their lived experience is shaped by low wages, precariato (job insecurity), and bureaucracy. From their perspective, they are giving honest advice. What they don’t factor in is that foreigners often arrive with external income, which completely changes the equation.
Is Italy a good place for remote workers?
Yes. If your income is earned outside Italy, remote workers benefit from a lower cost of living relative to the US, UK, or Canada, while maintaining foreign-level salaries. Your quality of live will receive an upgrade. The same is true if you have a half-decent foreign pension or passive income.
How much do you need to live comfortably in Italy?
A single person can live comfortably on €2,500/month post-tax, depending on location. In Canada, I pay that for my mortgage alone, for a townhome in a small city.
If you’re frugal and pick a cheap place, in many small Italian towns you can live on as little as €1,000/month post-tax, though that’s a bare-bones lifestyle.
€2,500 assumes a comfortable margin (eating out, weekend trips, occasional indulgences), the kind of life someone moving from the US, Canada, or the UK would likely want.
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We've been very back and forth on if we would want to move to Italy. We spent six weeks there last year, been many times for the obvious reasons (school, landscaping, safety, food quality, proximity to other cultures). Our biggest concern (and would love to hear your thoughts), is how are you going to mitigate the economic concerns for your kids and grandkids? If I were to move, my kids would face the same lack of economic opportunities. Maybe I can get my kids to open a business digitally since they're US citizens, but what about their kids?
Serendipity! I just watched Un Mondo a Parte two nights ago. What a lovely film—sweet and funny, sad in its subject matter, yet inspiring because of the love and determination of some of the town's residents to keep it alive. I hear it's had a wide reach in countries beyond Italy, and I hope people who see it understand that it's not just fiction.