Drugs, once again, but not only. Istat data on industrial production for November highlight an expanded recovery phase, with an average growth of 1.5% on the previous month, 1.4% in annual terms.
While progress in pharmaceuticals (+8.7%) remains the most robust, positive performances are also recorded for electronics, machinery and metallurgy. Once again, the averages are held back by means of transport (-3.1%), dragged down by motor vehicles (-7.6%), just as the chemical sector is down by almost three points. The food sector slowed by one point, while the textile-clothing sector remained at a standstill. The balance sheet for the 11 months improves but remains negative (-0.5%) and at this point, with only the December survey missing, it seems probable that also in 2025, therefore for the third consecutive year, manufacturing production in Italy will show a decline, after -2% in 2023 and -4% the following year. The seasonally adjusted index is now at 94.8, therefore almost five points below the average levels for 2021 taken as reference.
The context
Positive data but once again interlocutors, which are affected by a situation in the balance in several aspects, starting from the international scenario. With the start of 2026 – reports Istat – marked by new outbreaks of instability which support the forecasts of a slowdown in economic activity at an international level for the current year. Difficulties that also reverberate in the qualitative indicators of companies. If on average, taking into account trade and construction, the confidence index in the latest survey in December is progressing, the same is not the case for manufacturing, which instead sees every variable oriented downwards, with a decline of more than one point. Not brilliant numbers can also be seen on the international sales front. For non-EU markets, the November figure was in fact negative (-3.3%), lowering the growth of the eleven months to just two percentage points. In the ten months (here the data are total, there is also Europe), the progress is 3.4% but these are gains almost entirely attributable to a single sector, the pharmaceutical one (+34%), while elsewhere, between chemicals and textiles-clothing, rubber-plastics and electronics, machinery and cars, only stagnation or reduction in values are experienced.
The Berlin brake
The performance of the German economy, which continues to send conflicting and conflicting signals, will be decisive for the evolution of the manufacturing framework in Italy. The 2025 GDP, in the estimates released recently by the Berlin statistics institute, grew by 0.2%, as did the fourth quarter of the year, therefore close to stagnation. In November, in any case, German industrial production achieved a slight growth (+0.8% both on a monthly and annual basis), driven in particular by the performance of cars. The index, at the end of an almost continuous slowdown in the last three years, is seven points below the levels of 2021 and in general in the first 11 months of the year production was reduced by 1.2%. Slightly better data could arrive in December, at least judging from the domestic production of cars, which grew by 17%, bringing the annual total to 4.15 million units, two points above the level of 2024. Comforting data, even if ten years earlier the domestic production in Germany was equal to 5.7 million cars, numbers which currently certify a production gap of 27% compared to 2015. Nothing, however, compared to the collapse experienced in Italy, which in 10 years saw the already limited national production of cars reduced by almost 70%: now we are down to just over 200 thousand units, one twentieth of Berlin’s production. To find lower values we need to go back to 1954.
In detail
In November 2025, industrial production begins to grow again. Istat estimates that the seasonally adjusted index of industrial production will increase by 1.5% compared to October. Net of calendar effects, in November 2025 the general index increased in trend terms by 1.4%, with the calendar working days being 20 as in November 2024.
