Veniceruns on a handful of strong industries. If you’re job-hunting or weighing a move, here’s where the opportunities (and the big-name employers) are.
Top industries & employers
Tourism & hospitality
Hotel groups, Venezia Unica, tour operators, the cruise and excursion trade
Around twenty to thirty million visitors a year against fewer than 50,000 residents in the historic centre. It is overwhelmingly the largest employer and the force that shaped the access charge, the short-let market and the housing crisis.
Shipbuilding & port industry
Fincantieri Marghera, Autorità Portuale, Venice Port terminals
The Fincantieri yard at Marghera builds large cruise ships and is one of the biggest industrial employers in the Veneto, with an engineering supply chain across the mainland.
Chemicals & energy at Porto Marghera
Eni Versalis, Eni Biorefinery, Alcoa legacy sites, San Marco Bioenergia
Porto Marghera was one of Italy's largest chemical complexes and has spent three decades in contraction and conversion, including one of the world's first refinery-to-biorefinery conversions. It remains a substantial industrial employer and a live environmental remediation site.
Higher education & research
Ca' Foscari, IUAV, Venice International University, CNR-ISMAR
Ca' Foscari is a leading centre for economics, languages and Asian studies, and IUAV is one of Europe's few universities dedicated entirely to architecture and design. Both bring a young international population into a city that otherwise has few.
Culture & the arts economy
La Biennale di Venezia, Fondazione Musei Civici, Peggy Guggenheim Collection, Fondazione Cini, Punta della Dogana
The Biennale's art and architecture exhibitions, the film festival and the music and theatre programmes together make Venice one of the largest cultural employers in Europe, with a substantial freelance and production workforce.
Glass, craft and specialist manufacture
Murano furnaces, Barovier & Toso, Venini, Bevilacqua textiles
Murano glassmaking is a genuine industry with protected designation, though it has contracted sharply under energy costs and imitation imports. Venetian textile and restoration crafts survive on a similar small scale.
Some of this may be out of date. Spotted something inaccurate? Help us keep it right for the next newcomer.