In 2024, the number of tourist arrivals in the Italian region of Sicily experienced an annual increase. That year, Palermo was the province with the highest volume of arrivals, with the combined number of international and domestic arrivals totaling almost *** million. Palermo was also the province with the highest number of tourist overnight stays in Sicily in 2024.

Over the period from 2015 to 2018, Catania and Palermo were the provinces with the largest car populations in Sicily. In both provinces, the number of cars in operation grew over this period. In 2018, the car stock size in Catania exceeded *** thousand units.

In 2024, the highest unemployment rate was registered in the south of Italy. For Campania, Calabria, and Sicily, the shares of citizens without a job ranged from 13 percent to 16 percent. The disparities in unemployment indicators can be observed not only on the regional level but also among genders. In 2024, 17 percent of women in Campania were without a job, whereas the share of unemployed males was less than 15 percent. The region with the highest percentage of employed individuals, both men and women, was Trentino-South Tyrol. Economic crisis in Italy Unemployment is a serious problem in Italy, which began to worsen alongside the beginning of the financial crisis in 2008. The crisis of the Italian labor market reached its peak in 2014, when 12.7 percent of the citizens were without a job. Since 2015, the situation has been improving; the unemployment rate started a steady decrease, which continued in the following years, reaching 6.6 percent in 2024.Unemployment in the EU In November 2024, Italy ranked 13th among the European Union member states with the highest unemployment rate. In Spain, more than eleven percent of all potential employees did not have any occupation.

Matteo Messina Denaro, a Mafia boss convicted of organizing a slew of reprehensible crimes, was arrested in January 2023 after spending almost 30 years on the lam and becoming one of the most wanted people in Europe. A chief of the Sicilian Cosa Nostra family, 60-year-old Messina Denaro was detained by police while receiving treatment in a private clinic in Palermo. The criminal was convicted in absentia of dozens of Mafia-related murders, including his involvement in the 1992 assassinations of anti-Mafia prosecutors Giovanni Falcone and Paolo Borsellino. The Mafia chief was awarded his most recent life sentence in 2020 for his role in deadly bombings that beset Milan, Florence, and Rome in 1993, as well as for the kidnapping, torture, and murder of the 12-year-old son of an enemy who testified against Cosa Nostra.Messina Denaro's arrest came almost 30 years to the day since police detained Cosa Nostra's "boss of bosses" Salvatore "Totò" Riina, who was nabbed in a Palermo apartment after spending 23 years on the run. Riina eventually died in prison in 2017, having never repented.The Cosa Nostra boss who set the record for the longest time on the run was Bernardo Provenzano, who spent 38 years as a fugitive before being caught in a farmhouse near Sicily's Corleone in 2006. Provenzano died in jail in 2016, and similarly to Riina, never chose to collaborate with investigators. The decline of Cosa Nostra and the rise of the Calabrian Mafia With the clampdown that began against Cosa Nostra in the 1990s, the Sicilian Mafia began to lose its dominance in Italy, amid the rise of other organized crime syndicates on the mainland. The 'Ndrangheta syndicate, based in the southern region of Calabria, has since then surpassed Cosa Nostra in both reach and influence. The 'Ndrangheta has supplanted Cosa Nostra in the drugs trade and has become one of the leading cocaine traffickers in the world. The Calabrian crime syndicate is estimated to rake in as much as 60 billion U.S. dollars per year – more than the GDP of countries such as Lebanon and Uruguay – and has a tight clan-like structure that is more difficult to penetrate than that of Cosa Nostra. Organized crime: controlling one-tenth of Italy's economy Organized crime has been reported to be the biggest business in Italy, controlling an estimated nine percent of the country's economy. The value of assets seized from mafia organizations in Italy between 2020 and 2021 amounted to almost two billion euros. In addition to the 'Ndrangheta and Cosa Nostra, the mafia groups of Camorra and Sacra Corona Unita – based in the southern regions of Campania and Puglia, respectively – complete the top four of Italy's main crime syndicates.

In 2023, 3,039 people died in road accidents in Italy, a decrease of 120 deaths compared to the previous year. This statistic breaks down this figure by region where the accidents happened. Lombardy was the region with the highest number of fatal road crashes, with 377 deaths. In Lazio, where the largest city and capital of the country is located, Rome, 346 deadly road accidents occurred in 2023.

As of the 2023, the illicit drug in Italy with the highest average price was cocaine, at roughly **** euros per gram, followed by white heroin and brown heroin. The price of drugs varies across countries, for example street price of cocaine in Europe was the highest in Slovakia with almost 100 euros per gram. Cocaine addiction In 2022 alone, there were ****** individuals who entered treatment for cocaine addiction in Italy. This number was the second highest among all European countries after Spain. As of that year, there were in total **** thousand people being treated for cocaine addiction in public facilities in Italy, with the highest number belonging to the age group between 40 and 44 years. Cannabis use Cannabis was the most consumed type of illicit drug in Italy, with more than eight percent of the population having consumed it at least once in 2022. This substance was the most popular among students, with nearly ** percent of the students using it at least once in the given year.