Sources and method

How we read ISTAT data.

A transparent reference to distinguish economic activities, enterprises, operating offices and farms.

Industry and Services: ASIA – Local Unit, 2023.

The ISTAT 183_285_DF_DICA_ASIAULP_2 flow provides annual data for ATECO 2007 and territory activities. We select LU, number of local units of active companies, and TOTAL, all classes of employees. A single enterprise can have multiple local units: counts are not interchangeable.

We use 2023 as a common year of extraction. We do not present this data as measures of 2026. Provincial data include the territory of the province or metropolitan city, not only the municipality.

Agriculture: farms, 2020.

Table 9 of the 7th General Agricultural Census provides a complete regional framework: 1,133,023 farms in 2020. They are farms censused, not all agri-food enterprises, nor ASIA local units. The component of the food and beverage industries is treated separately in Food & Beverage.

The ISTAT publication of 27 July 2026 on the structure of agricultural holdings covers 2023 and reports 1,130,358 active holdings. The site maintains the regional detail of the 2020 census table, without attributing to those regions the values of the different 2023 survey.

Perimeters of the 13 areas.

Aerospace

Aircraft, space vehicles and related devices; direct. ATECO 2007: 303.

Automotive

Motor vehicles, trailers and semitrailers; direct. ATECO 2007: 29.

Ceramics

Terracotta building materials and other porcelain and ceramic products; direct. ATECO 2007: 233, 234.

Design

Specialized design activities; direct. ATECO 2007: 741.

Electronic & Software

Computers, electronics and optics; software production and computer consulting; composite perimeter. ATECO 2007: 26, 62.

Engineering

Studies of architecture, engineering and other technical studies; proxy: also includes architecture. ATECO 2007: 711.

Fashion

Textiles, clothing, leather and related products; composite perimeter. ATECO 2007: 13, 14, 15.

Food and Beverage

Food and beverage industries; direct. ATECO 2007: 10, 11.

Healthcare

Healthcare in the register of active enterprises; partial coverage: does not include the entire public health system. ATECO 2007: 86.

Internet

Information services and other IT services; proxy: includes further activities than the Internet. ATECO 2007: 63.

Life

Pharmaceutical and research in natural sciences and engineering; proxy: research includes further disciplines. ATECO 2007: 21, 721.

Luxury

Leather and related products; jewellery, jewellery and precious stones processing; chain proxy: does not identify luxury companies. ATECO 2007: 15, 321.

Agrifood

Agricultural holdings: primary production, not whole agri-food chain; partial cover: agricultural holdings, separated from the food and beverage industries. 7th Census, Table 9.

Quotes, selection and missing data.

The national quota is the relationship between count of the territory and total Italian of the same perimeter. The report is not a localization quotient: it does not demonstrate the specialization of the territory. The five provinces per area are selected in descending order of local units observed, with territorial code as a criterion in case of parity. The five agricultural regions follow the same rule on farms.

Only ATECO disjoining categories within a perimeter. Publishing areas can overlap: Fashion and Luxury share part of the skin’s activities, for example. Areas should not be added to each other. When a component is missing, the total composite remains unavailable: we do not replace the absent data with zero. Trentino-Alto Adige can be reconstructed by the two autonomous provinces when both are available.

What this data does not measure.

They do not measure the number of registered trademarks, the demand for advice, the value of the trademark or the probability of registration. Luxury, Internet, Engineering and Life Science categories have declared limits: there are no perfect matches between all editorial areas and a single statistical category. The territorial pages do not declare local legalMark offices.

Official sources and extraction data.

LegalMark processing on ISTAT data, consultation 11 October 2026. An update of data requires a new verification of sources and perimeters; an automatic update is not active.