Student Jobs in Milan: Rules, Pay & Where to Find Part-Time Work

Yes, you can work part-time while studying in Milan, and thousands of international students do it every year. But most guides on this topic dodge the two questions you actually care about: how many hours you’re legally allowed to work, and how much you’ll actually be paid.

This guide answers both, with the real numbers.

The short version

• EU/EEA/Swiss students: you can work with no restrictions, exactly like an Italian citizen.
• Non-EU students: your permesso di soggiorno per studio already allows you to work: up to 20 hours per week, with an annual cap of 1,040 hours. You don’t need any extra permit.
• Italy has no statutory minimum wage. Pay floors are set by sector-level collective agreements (CCNL), which puts most entry-level student jobs in the €8–9.50 gross per hour range.
• The easiest and safest job is inside your own university: the “150 ore” student collaboration schemes pay around €9/hour, tax-free.
• If you earn under €8,500 in a year, you pay no income tax (IRPEF) as an employee.

1. Are you allowed to work? The rules, precisely

If you’re an EU, EEA or Swiss citizen

You have the same employment rights as an Italian citizen. No work permit, no hour limits, no special authorisation.

Two things you do need if you’re staying longer than three months:

• Iscrizione anagrafica: registering your residence with the Comune di Milano.
• SSN registration: signing up with the Italian national health service.

Employers will often ask for these, so sort them out early. See our guide to the documents you need for staying in Milan.

If you’re a non-EU citizen

Here’s the part that gets misreported constantly: you do not need a special work authorisation stamped on your visa. The right to work comes attached to your residence permit by law.

Under article 14, paragraph 4 of DPR 394/1999, a permesso di soggiorno per motivi di studio allows you to carry out employed work for:

a maximum of 20 hours per week, cumulative across 52 weeks, up to an annual limit of 1,040 hours.

Two clarifications that matter enormously in practice:

The 20-hour weekly cap is rigid. The Italian Labour Inspectorate (Ispettorato Nazionale del Lavoro) has confirmed that you cannot bundle your 1,040 annual hours into full-time months, for example working 40 hours a week all summer and nothing during term. The weekly ceiling applies week by week, all year. The logic is that your studies must remain clearly predominant over your work.

Visa ≠ residence permit. Your visa gets you into Italy. The document that matters once you’re here is the permesso di soggiorno, which you apply for within 8 working days of arrival. Good news: the ricevuta (receipt) of your application is already enough to be legally hired: you don’t have to wait for the plastic card, which can take months.

If you want to work more than 20 hours a week, you have to apply to convert your study permit into a work permit before it expires. That’s a different process with different requirements: talk to your university’s international office well in advance.

⚠️ Don’t guess on this. Exceeding the limits can affect your permit renewal. Your university’s international student office and a patronato (free public assistance office) can both check your specific situation at no cost.

2. The paperwork you need before your first payslip

Codice fiscale

Your Italian tax code. Nothing works without it: not a contract, not a bank account, not a phone plan. How you get it depends on who you are:

Your situation	Where you get it
Non-EU, staying more than 90 days	Assigned by the Questura (or Sportello Unico) when you apply for your permesso di soggiorno, often automatically
EU citizen	Any Agenzia delle Entrate office
Any nationality, staying under 90 days	Any Agenzia delle Entrate office

Before you queue anywhere: check with your university. Most Milanese universities have agreements with the Agenzia delle Entrate and run group codice fiscale sessions for incoming international students during welcome week. It takes twenty minutes instead of a morning.

An Italian bank account

Salaries in Italy are paid by bank transfer: cash payment of wages has been illegal since 2018. You’ll need an Italian IBAN. Most banks offer free accounts for under-30s; several online banks let you open one entirely from your phone with a codice fiscale and a residence address.

SPID or CIE

Your digital identity for Italian public services (INPS, Agenzia delle Entrate, healthcare bookings). Not strictly required to work, but you’ll want it eventually.

3. How much do students actually earn in Milan?

There is no minimum wage in Italy

This surprises almost every international student. Italy has no statutory national minimum wage. Instead, minimum pay is set by CCNL: national collective agreements negotiated sector by sector. The relevant ones for student work are the CCNL Turismo/Pubblici Esercizi (bars, restaurants, hotels) and the CCNL Commercio/Terziario (retail).

Practically, this means: the number in your contract should be traceable to a CCNL level. If an employer can’t tell you which CCNL and which level applies to you, that’s a warning sign.

Realistic pay ranges in Milan

Type of work	Indicative gross pay	Notes
University “150 ore” collaboration	~€9/hour, tax-free	Best value on this list: the amount is exempt from IRPEF, so gross = net
Bar, café, restaurant (entry level)	€8.70–9.20/hour	CCNL Pubblici Esercizi, levels 6 and 5. Tips are informal and not guaranteed
Retail sales assistant	~€8.50–9.50/hour	CCNL Commercio, entry levels
Kitchen assistant / dishwasher	€8.10–8.80/hour	CCNL Pubblici Esercizi, levels 7 and 6S. Lowest Italian requirement of any hospitality role
Trade fair / event staff	~€60–100 per day	Usually flat daily rates for 8-hour shifts
Private tutoring (school subjects)	€12–20/hour	Private market, paid directly by families
English tutoring / conversation	€15–25/hour	Higher if you’re a native speaker with a certificate
Extracurricular internship (Lombardy)	€500/month minimum, by law	See below

Where these numbers come from: the hospitality figures are calculated from the CCNL Pubblici Esercizi minimums in force from 1 June 2026, as published by Confcommercio Milano (monthly minimum including contingency, divided by the standard 172-hour divisor). Level 7 is €1,390.20/month, level 6 is €1,491.57 and level 5 is €1,580.09. On top of these you may also receive the provincial third element, seniority increments and additional monthly instalments (13th and 14th month), which raise your effective hourly rate. Retail figures follow the CCNL Commercio and land in the same band. Tutoring rates are typical Milan market rates. Always check the specific figure in your own contract.

Unpaid internships are illegal in Lombardy

If someone in Milan offers you an unpaid extracurricular internship, they are breaking regional rules. Regione Lombardia sets a mandatory minimum participation allowance of €500 per month for extracurricular traineeships (with at least 80% monthly attendance). It can be reduced in specific, defined cases:

• €400/month if you’re given meal vouchers or canteen access
• €350/month if your daily presence doesn’t exceed 4 hours
• Proportionally reduced, but never below €300/month, if attendance falls under 80%

Note the distinction: curricular internships (the ones that are part of your degree and give you credits) follow different rules and can be unpaid. Extracurricular ones cannot.

Tax: the €8,500 line

For 2026, the no tax area for employees is €8,500. Earn less than that in a calendar year and employee tax credits cancel out your IRPEF entirely: you owe nothing.

Since 20 hours a week at €9/hour works out to roughly €7,500–9,000 over a full year, most student workers in Milan land right around this threshold. Your employer withholds tax at source and issues you a Certificazione Unica (CU) the following year, which you can use to claim back anything overpaid.

4. Contract types: how to tell a real job offer from a bad one

This is the section most guides skip, and it’s the one that protects you. In Milan, a student job will normally come in one of these forms.

Contratto a chiamata (intermittent contract)

The single most common student contract in Italy for bars, retail and events. You’re on the books, but the employer calls you when they need you. You get a payslip and contributions for the hours you actually work.

There’s a specific advantage if you’re young: for workers under 25, an intermittent contract can be used without the usual requirement that the work be intermittent in nature. The contract terminates automatically when you turn 25.

Part-time fixed-term contract (tempo determinato part-time)

A standard employment contract with defined weekly hours. More stable, more predictable, harder to get. This is what you want if you find a regular shift pattern that fits your timetable.

Prestazione occasionale / PrestO

For genuinely occasional work. The limits for 2026:

• €5,000 per year maximum for the worker, but students under 25 have their compensation counted at 75%, which raises the effective ceiling to roughly €6,666
• €2,500 maximum from any single employer
• The employer registers the work through INPS before it starts

Tirocinio (internship)

Curricular (part of your degree, credit-bearing) or extracurricular (subject to the €500/month Lombardy minimum described above).

What a legitimate offer looks like

Before you start, you should have, in writing:

• ✅ The CCNL and the level that applies to you
• ✅ Your gross hourly rate or monthly salary
• ✅ Your weekly hours (at or under 20 if you’re non-EU)
• ✅ Start date and contract duration
• ✅ Confirmation you’ll be paid by bank transfer

5. Where students actually find work in Milan

🏛️ Inside your own university: start here

This is the most overlooked option, and objectively the best one. Italian universities run collaborazioni studentesche, usually called the “150 ore” scheme: paid part-time work in university offices, libraries, labs and student services.

Why it beats every other option:

• The pay is exempt from income tax: the gross rate is exactly what lands in your pocket
• The hours are designed around lectures and exam sessions
• It’s on campus, so there’s zero commute
• It’s unambiguously legal and documented, which matters for permit renewals
• It’s genuinely CV-relevant if you land in a research group or an international office

How it works in Milan:

• Università di Milano-Bicocca: up to 150 hours per academic year (minimum 8), €9 per hour, tax-exempt, paid onto your Carta Multiservizi within 60 days of certifying your hours. Applications go through Segreterie Online.
• Politecnico di Milano: a Call for Applications is published each semester.
• Statale, Cattolica, Bocconi and the design academies run equivalent schemes.

Catch: places are limited and there’s usually a selection based on academic merit and, at some universities, income bracket (ISEE). Calls open at fixed times of year, usually early in the academic year, so check your university portal in September and October. Set a reminder now.

Not sure which university systems apply to you? See our guide to universities in Milan for international students.

☕ Hospitality: bars, cafés and restaurants

The classic. Milan has an enormous food and drink sector and constant turnover, which means constant hiring.

• Waiter / waitress (cameriere): conversational Italian is genuinely necessary here. Evening and weekend shifts, physically demanding, but flexible and social.
• Barista: Milan takes coffee seriously, and “barista” in Italy means espresso, not latte art competitions. Often daytime hours, which is harder to combine with lectures.
• Kitchen assistant / dishwasher (aiuto cuoco, lavapiatti): the most accessible role if your Italian isn’t there yet, and a common way in. Physically tough, but the language barrier is lowest.

Where to look: walk. Genuinely. In neighbourhoods like Navigli, Isola, Porta Romana and Città Studi, a printed CV handed over in person at 3–4pm (the dead hour between lunch and dinner) still works better than any job board.

🛍️ Retail

Milan is a fashion capital and the retail sector is proportionally huge: from Corso Buenos Aires high street to Quadrilatero della Moda luxury.

• Sales assistant: good Italian usually required, though English is a real asset in tourist-heavy areas. Luxury boutiques specifically value additional languages: Chinese, Arabic, Russian and Japanese speakers are actively sought.
• Stockroom assistant: less customer contact, lower language barrier.

Hiring spikes hard before Christmas and around the saldi (sales periods: January and July). Apply 4–6 weeks ahead of those windows.

🎪 Trade fairs and events: the most Milan-specific option

If there’s one thing Milan offers that other student cities don’t, it’s this. The city hosts a relentless calendar of international trade fairs and events, all of which need large numbers of temporary staff for a few days at a time.

The big ones:

• Salone del Mobile / Milan Design Week (April): the largest, and the one with the most English-speaking roles
• EICMA (motorcycles, November)
• Milano Fashion Week (February and September)
• HOMI, Host, Bit and dozens of others at Fiera Milano Rho and Allianz MiCo

Typical roles: hostess/steward, reception, badge scanning, stand assistant, interpreter, crowd management. Pay is usually a flat daily rate, and the work is concentrated into a handful of intense days, which makes it unusually compatible with a study timetable.

How to get in: register with the specialist hostess/steward agencies that staff Fiera Milano events. They build databases and call people back, so registering once in autumn pays off all year. Language skills raise your rate directly.

📚 Tutoring and language teaching

If you’re a native or fluent English speaker, this is your highest hourly rate for the least physical effort.

• English conversation and tutoring: high demand from Italian students, professionals and parents. No teaching degree required for conversation work, though a TEFL/CELTA certificate raises what you can charge.
• Academic tutoring (ripetizioni): maths, physics, chemistry and economics are the most requested. Requires enough Italian to explain concepts to a teenager.

You’ll find work through tutoring platforms, university noticeboards, neighbourhood Facebook groups and word of mouth. Note that most of this is paid privately and directly: if you’re doing it at any volume, look into the prestazione occasionale framework so it’s declared.

🛵 Delivery riding: read this before you sign up

Food delivery is often presented as the easy flexible option. The reality in Italy in 2026 is more complicated.

• Uber Eats left the Italian market in 2023. The active platforms are Glovo, Deliveroo and Just Eat.
• They use different employment models. Just Eat engages riders as employees, with salary, contributions and protections. Glovo and Deliveroo engage riders as self-employed, under the Assodelivery–UGL collective agreement.
• This matters a lot if you’re non-EU. Self-employed work still counts against your 20-hour weekly limit, but tracking and documenting it is messier, and setting up as autonomous while on a study permit adds administrative complexity. Check with your international office first.
• Earnings are variable and weather-dependent, you generally supply your own bike or scooter, and the sector has been the subject of ongoing labour disputes and strikes in Milan.

It can work, plenty of students do it, but go in with the full picture rather than the marketing version.

🏢 Office and administrative roles

Harder to get part-time, but valuable if you can. Reception, back-office, data entry, customer support. Milan’s concentration of multinationals means some of these roles run entirely in English. Fixed hours are the usual obstacle: they rarely bend around lecture timetables.

6. What if your Italian isn’t good yet?

Straight answer: your options are narrower, but they’re not zero. Milan is the most international city in Italy and there is genuine English-speaking work here.

Realistic without Italian:

• English tutoring and conversation partnering
• International trade fairs (Design Week and Fashion Week specifically want English speakers)
• Hostels and international-facing hospitality
• Kitchen and back-of-house roles
• Babysitting and au pair work for expat families
• Customer support for international companies
• Luxury retail, if you speak another in-demand language

Realistically off the table until your Italian improves:

• Waiting tables in a local restaurant
• Most high-street retail
• Anything administrative dealing with Italian clients

Treat this as temporary. Even A2-level Italian roughly doubles what you can apply for, and hospitality work is itself one of the fastest ways to get there: you’ll pick up more Italian in three months behind a bar than in a year of classes. Many universities offer free or subsidised Italian courses to enrolled students. Take them in your first semester, not your last.

7. Where to actually look

Job boards

• Indeed Italia: the biggest. Filter by “Milano” and “part-time”
• InfoJobs.it: long-established Italian board, strong on retail and hospitality
• LinkedIn: best for office roles, internships and anything corporate
• Subito.it: the Italian classifieds site; a lot of informal local hospitality and tutoring work lands here

⚠️ Older guides still recommend Monster.it. Don’t bother: Monster and CareerBuilder filed for bankruptcy in June 2025 and the Italian operation has closed.

Recruitment agencies (agenzie per il lavoro)

Register once, get called repeatedly. Particularly effective for retail, hospitality and event work: Adecco, Randstad, Manpower, GiGroup, Openjobmetis, Umana. Most have offices in central Milan and walk-in registration.

Your university career service

Every major Milan university runs one, and they’re underused by international students. They have employer relationships, exclusive listings, career fairs, and staff who can read your CV. It’s free and you’re already paying for it.

Facebook and Telegram groups

This is where a lot of Milan’s informal hiring genuinely happens: Erasmus and international student groups, neighbourhood job groups, tutoring groups. Search for your university’s name plus “students” and for “lavoro Milano”.

Walking in

Still works, especially in hospitality and independent retail. Print copies of your CV. Go between 3 and 5pm when nobody’s in service. Ask for the manager by name if you can find it. Be brief.

8. Your CV and cover letter

The Italian CV

Keep it to one page for a part-time role. Two at most.

Include:

• Name, phone, email, city of residence
• Education, most recent first
• Work experience in reverse chronological order: bar work, volunteering and internships all count
• Languages with CEFR levels (A2, B1, C1). Be honest; they will test you
• Relevant skills: POS systems, Office, anything specific

A note on the photo, date of birth and nationality. Older guides tell you these are mandatory in Italy. They’re not. A photo is still common in Italy, particularly in hospitality and customer-facing retail, where it’s an advantage, but it’s optional, and the Europass template dropped it after GDPR. Date of birth and nationality are not required fields at all. Our practical suggestion: include a neutral photo when applying to a café or a shop, skip it for corporate applications, and only give your date of birth if the application form asks for it.

Language of the CV: match the job ad. Italian ad, Italian CV. English ad, English CV. If you write in Italian, have someone check it: a CV with grammar mistakes in a language you claim to speak works against you.

The cover letter (lettera di presentazione)

Short and specific. Three paragraphs:

1. Which role you’re applying for and where you saw it
2. Why you fit: connect one concrete thing you’ve done to one thing the job needs
3. Your availability (be honest about your timetable) and a closing line

Address it to a named person if you can find one. Otherwise “Spettabile Ufficio Risorse Umane” is perfectly correct.

Two things worth saying explicitly if you’re an international student: your Italian level and how you’re improving it, and your legal work status: “I hold a valid permesso di soggiorno per studio, which allows me to work up to 20 hours per week” removes a question mark from the employer’s mind before they have to ask.

9. Undeclared work: the risk nobody warns you about

Sooner or later, someone in Milan will offer you cash in hand with no contract. It happens most in hospitality, and it’s aimed disproportionately at international students because they’re assumed not to know the rules.

Why it’s a bad deal, specifically for you:

• No proof of income. Non-EU students need to demonstrate financial means when renewing a residence permit. Cash work generates nothing you can show.
• No insurance. Cut yourself in a kitchen with no contract and there’s no INAIL cover.
• No recourse. If they don’t pay you at the end of the month, you have almost nothing to enforce.
• No contributions, no record, and nothing that counts as documented experience later.

Warning signs:

• “We’ll sort out the contract after a trial period”, and the trial never ends
• Payment in cash, with no payslip (busta paga)
• No answer to “which CCNL and which level am I on?”
• Being asked to work well beyond 20 hours a week while on a study permit
• Being asked to open a partita IVA for what is obviously a regular employee job

An unpaid “trial shift” of a couple of hours is common practice in Italian hospitality and not in itself alarming. A week of unpaid trial is not a trial, it’s unpaid work.

If something goes wrong, help is free: patronati (INAS, ACLI, INCA) and union offices in Milan assist workers regardless of nationality, at no charge.

10. Making it fit around your degree

Twenty hours a week is a real commitment on top of a full course load. Some things that genuinely help:

• Front-load the term. Take more shifts in the quiet weeks and negotiate down before exam sessions. Italian exam sessions are concentrated and brutal: January and June will not leave room for much else.
• Tell your employer your exam dates in advance. In writing, weeks ahead. Milanese employers are used to student staff and most will work around it if you give notice. None of them will if you tell them the day before.
• Prefer evening and weekend work if your lectures are in the morning, and avoid split shifts: the classic hospitality 11–15 / 18–23 pattern will eat your entire day.
• Do the maths on transport. A job that pays €2/hour more but adds 45 minutes each way isn’t the better job. Check our guide to getting around Milan.
• Know what you actually need. Work out your real monthly costs first, see our cost of living in Milan breakdown, so you know whether you need 8 hours a week or 20. Many students end up working more than they need to.

Frequently asked questions

Before you start looking

Get these three things done first, in this order:

1. Your permesso di soggiorno application (or the receipt): you can be hired with the receipt
2. Your codice fiscale: ask your university about group sessions during welcome week
3. An Italian bank account: wages must legally be paid by transfer

Then start applying. Aim for September and early October: it’s when university collaboration calls open, when hospitality restaffs after summer, and when the autumn fair season starts hiring.

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Related reading:
Cost of living in Milan · Documents you need for staying in Milan · Student accommodation in Milan · Universities in Milan for international students

Official sources: Agenzia delle Entrate · Portale Immigrazione · INPS · Regione Lombardia

This guide is general information, not legal advice. Immigration and employment rules change: check your specific situation with your university’s international office or a patronato.