Italy pizza-maker shortage: An Italian business group has said there is a shortage of pizza makers in the country.
The Italian Federation of Confcommercio Companies for Italy said that even though Italy’s unemployment rate is high, people are unwilling to work making pizzas because the pay is too low and the hours are too long.
“Notwithstanding the economic crisis and unemployment, it is proving difficult to find them,” the group said in a statement, according to the Daily Telegraph.
Around 6,000 pizza-makers are needed around the country, the association estimated.
Foreign immigrants have filled the positions, with Egyptians showing they can be adept in making pizzas.
“I would say about 80 per cent of Egyptians who come to work in Italy end up as pizza makers,” Egyptian immigrant Amadeo Al-Wikel, who runs a pizzeria in Rome, told the paper.
Antonio Corneldaniel, who also manages a pizza shop, told ABC that his pizza makers come mainly from Bangladesh. They start as dishwashers and then eventually move up the rung to make pizzas.
“It’s a hard job, but it has great satisfaction,” Franceso De Marco told ABC News, saying that he does not believe that Italians “don’t want to be pizza makers.”
“You can get an immigrant worker to work for much less and longer hours so the pizzeria owner opts for that even if they may not be good at making pizzas,” he said.
Roberto Caporuscio, the U.S. President of the Association of Neapolitan Pizzaiuoli, told NBC News that in America, immigrants mainly make pizzas as well.
“Most of the immigrants (in U.S. pizza kitchens) are from Latin America,” he said.
Friends Read Free