The tertiary sector returns to be the driving force of the country in the third quarter of 2021, registering a growth in value added (va) of 3.4% on the previous quarter, higher than the national one, stable at 2.6%. Therefore, the outsourcing process resumes, which in the last 40 years was interrupted only during the pandemic in two quarters between 2020 and 2021. Services produce over 72% of the total value in the North-West and almost 80% in the Center and in the South. The lowest share is found in the North-East with two thirds of the total. This is what emerges from the report of the last quarter of 2021 of the Manageritalia tertiary sector Observatory. In detail, leading this positive performance, for the second consecutive quarter, were the accommodation and catering / commerce / transport sectors (+ 8.6%), which thanks to a significant leap in the second and third quarters of 2021 are very close to reaching pre-pandemics. The other tertiary sector which had been most penalized by the anti-pandemic measures (arts and entertainment activities), on the other hand, saw a slight decline (-0.4%) after the significant rebound of the previous quarter. Rates are positive for all other services. The trend recovery (i.e. compared to the same quarter of 2021) continues to appear astonishing for almost all sectors and sectors but is still due to a base effect, namely the comparison with the first pandemic year. pre-pandemic decade it emerges that the Tertiary sector is the only sector with positive average annual growth rates and increasing shares in all macro-areas, regions and with very few exceptions also provinces both in terms of employment and added value with an average employment growth of around 1.5% in the North and Center and less than 1% in the South and islands. As for the other sectors, industry in the strict sense of the word has lost employment but not so, the non-market tertiary sector (public administration, education and health) keeps its employment share stable but loses weight as it goes across the country, and the construction performance is particularly negative with negative average annual growth rates both in terms of value and employment in all macro-areas, with a consequent strong loss of production capacity. Commenting on the report Mario Mantovani, President of Manageritalia said: “There is a phenomenon of overheating in the Construction sector which, by absorbing more resources than the other sectors, suffers from a supply and labor gap which cannot fill demand. The risk is that by continuing with this policy, the structural growth of the entire economy of the country will be blocked, in which the tertiary sector continues to record, without incentives, higher positive values. The metaphor that derives from this is that of a medium-displacement car, our industry, fortunately very competitive, which is continuously maintained and therefore can achieve performances exceeding its dimensional power, which could take it out of speed “.” Then – he explains – we have a poorly maintained larger displacement car that still achieves much better performance, the tertiary sector, whose growth is distributed and homogeneous throughout the country. Indeed, from the numbers of the Observatory it emerges that the tertiary sector in the South enjoys overall good health and has excellent potential thanks to administrative, entrepreneurial and managerial skills and competences in some provinces. For it to blossom definitively, a development policy is needed for that advanced tertiary sector which also supports industry and tourism in the area, providing skills and managerial skills for a common, synergistic and structural growth “.” From the dynamic analysis – he underlines – of the trends of the last decade pre-pandemic, it emerges that the tertiary market is the only sector with positive average annual growth rates and increasing shares in all macro-areas, regions and with very few exceptions also provinces both in terms of employment and added value with a average employment growth of around 1.5% in the North and Center and less than 1% in the South and the islands. As for the other sectors, industry in the strict sense of the word has lost employment shares but not so, the tertiary sector non-market (public administration, education and health) keeps its employment share stable but loses weight as it goes across the country, and construction performance appears to be par ticularly negative with negative average annual growth rates both in terms of turnover and employment in all macro-areas, with a consequent strong loss of production capacity “. For two types of services, financial and real estate, an extreme partition emerges between the North and the South of the country. Their strong concentration in the northern areas of the country has a decisive influence on the regional divide. A strong geographical disparity on the north-south axis is also observable in commerce (20% of employment in the Tertiary sector at national level), which occupies a greater share of employees (out of total employees) in the South, mainly in the retail sector. provincial level, a very varied picture is presented in terms of long-term performance: the geographical position is far from implying a certain level of economic activity – high in the North and low in the South. Territorial samples in the South are frequent, indicating that local administrative and entrepreneurial skills and competences are likely to carry considerable weight. The first evident difference between the macro-areas is the much greater weight of the non-market Tertiary sector in the South: in particular, the shares of Public Administration and Education are exceptionally high compared to those recorded in the rest of the country. At the Center there is a greater weight of public administration, largely dictated by the presence of Rome. The second key difference is the relative contribution of the different market services sectors. The tertiary sectors that group economic activities with high added value, including financial activities, information and telecommunication services and professional, scientific and technical activities, produce a greater share of added value in the North-West, significantly higher than that observed not only in the South but also in the North-East. Emilio Rossi, Director of the Observatory of the Manageritalia Tertiary, commented: “From the data of the last report of the Observatory, a very clear and at times unexpected image of the country’s economy emerges . The tertiary sector, poor in incentives and more penalized by the lock down, is growing more than the Italian GDP, and does so in a homogeneous way, demonstrating that the process of outsourcing of the Italian economy continues even after the stop imposed by the pandemic. The Tertiary sector is the only macro-sector in which added value and created employment grow uniformly in all the provinces, without divisions between North and South. A virtuous sector therefore in which more should be invested in order to drive the recovery of the economy even more strongly. economics “. Matteo Sartori PhD student at Cemfi, Fundación Banco de España and the Tortuga think tank, who collaborated in the drafting of the report, said:” The contribution of female employment is lacking in the South, which is much more widespread in other territories. Furthermore, although the role of the Tertiary sector is greater in the South, in the North West the tertiary market dominates in terms of competitiveness and value, but as one descends to the South, the largest component of the economy is the services that belong to the Public Administration. and not those of the so-called tertiary market ”.