What a Master in Management Pays in Italy: The AlmaLaurea Data

Every prospective MiM applicant eventually asks the unglamorous question: what does this degree actually pay, and how fast? For Italy you can answer it with unusual precision, because Italy runs the most detailed graduate survey in Europe — AlmaLaurea’s Condizione occupazionale dei Laureati.

AlmaLaurea is a consortium of roughly 78 universities, and its survey covers around 660,000 graduates, interviewed at one, three and five years out. I focused on the second-cycle laurea magistrale — the level a Master in Management sits at — and on the gruppo economico (economics and management), which AlmaLaurea reports as its own group. One caveat before any number: every salary AlmaLaurea publishes is net monthly take-home, not gross annual — the opposite of how France’s CGE reports — so the figures look small to an outside eye and must never be set one-to-one against a gross number.

The headline: starts solid, compounds fast

The economics-management cohort starts in good shape and improves sharply. Employment and contract quality at one year versus five:

Economics-management magistrale	~1 year out	~5 years out
Employment rate	81.8%	90.1%
On a permanent contract	34.7%	76.6%
Mean net monthly pay	€1,529	€1,877

By year five the field reaches what AlmaLaurea calls piena occupazione — full employment above 90 percent — one of only three master’s groups, alongside engineering and medicine, to get there. The time to a first job for the group is about 5.3 months, faster than the all-master’s average of 7.2.

What the first job actually pays

That €1,529 is net, monthly. Annualised it is roughly €23,000 net in your account in year one — a number that startles people raised on gross headline salaries, until you remember it is already after Italy’s income tax and social contributions. AlmaLaurea publishes a mean, not a median, and it inflation-adjusts the series, which matters this year: nominal pay rose in 2023 but real pay actually fell across every cohort, the survey’s gloomiest finding. Economics still ranks among the best-paid fields — third at five years (€1,877 net), behind only ICT (€2,146) and industrial engineering (€2,088).

The contract number that looks alarming and isn’t

Only 34.7 percent of economics-management graduates are on a permanent (indeterminato) contract one year out, and people read that as precarity. It is really Italy’s entry ritual: the rest are on fixed-term, apprenticeship or stage contracts that the country uses as the standard on-ramp. Watch what happens by year five — permanent contracts hit 76.6 percent, fixed-term collapses, and another 10.7 percent have gone self-employed. The one-year snapshot measures the ramp, not your prospects.

Where the money is: geography and the cost of staying

In Italy, the variable that moves your pay most is the question of leaving. Economics graduates split roughly 55 percent North, 20 percent Centre, 18 percent South, with 6 to 7 percent abroad — and the North–South employment gap alone is about 10 points. But the figure that matters is the abroad premium: graduates working abroad earn a mean €2,174 net per month versus €1,393 in Italy one year out — plus 56 percent. That one line is Italy’s brain drain, quantified, and it is why a MiM from an Italian school is for many students a passport as much as a credential.

By sector, economics-management is the most private-sector-heavy group AlmaLaurea tracks (91.6 percent private at one year) and the most diversified, fanning out across at least eight industries rather than funnelling into one. The pay follows the branch you land in: graduates who go into banking and insurance earn the largest premium in AlmaLaurea’s regression, ahead of energy and manufacturing. As in France, your sector choice inside the degree moves the number more than the school’s name does — the trap the marketing career path post lays out applies here too.

The gender gap is there from the first payslip

Among full-time economics-management starters, men earn about 6.3 percent more than women one year out, widening to 10.2 percent by year five — and economics carries one of the wider gaps among master’s fields. A large part of the divergence is the parenthood effect AlmaLaurea isolates: among graduates with children, men’s employment runs 16 to 18 points ahead of women’s, against barely any gap for those without.

Two things worth carrying into the decision

First, the real-wage erosion is not a blip. The Bank of Italy note in the report puts Italian hourly employee incomes about a quarter below France and Germany — the same gap that pushes graduates across the border. Second, graduates are getting choosier: only 32.9 percent of job-seeking master’s grads would now accept a job paying €1,250 a month or less, down nearly 7 points in a year. And about a quarter work remotely, concentrated in exactly the sectors economics grads enter — consulting, IT, banking.

How to read this for your own decision

If you are weighing an Italian MiM, the honest read is this: the job market is solid and reasonably quick — employed in about five months, full employment by year five — the contract starts precarious and ends permanent, and take-home pay is modest by Northern-European standards, which is precisely why the abroad premium is so large and why so many graduates use the degree to leave.

For the live, school-by-school version of these numbers, the MiM careers page for Italy tracks each program’s reported outcomes and the post-study work rules. Compare it with the French CGE breakdown — gross there, net here — and the Spanish picture next door. If you are still deciding whether the degree pays off at all, start with is the MiM worth it in 2026.

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Source: AlmaLaurea, “XXVI Indagine sulla Condizione occupazionale dei Laureati”, Rapporto 2024 — figures for the second-cycle (laurea magistrale) economics-management group at one and five years out. All AlmaLaurea pay figures are mean monthly NET, inflation-adjusted; AlmaLaurea does not publish a median.