Edoardo Bonatti
12 luglio 2019
According to the latest Istat report, unemployment in Italy is now at its lowest since February 2012. In fact, the unemployment rate registered in the last month of May dropped to 9.9%, finally under the 10% threshold after seven years.
This result depends not only on the decline of unemployed persons, but it is also thanks to the rise of employed individuals and to the substantial stability of inactive people aged 15-64 on a yearly basis. In May 2019 the estimate of employed people increased, compared with the previous month (+0.3%, +67,000), thus influencing the overall employment rate which is now equal to 59% of the labour force. Such a figure is the highest one since 1977, the year when Istat data on the subject became available for the first time. The increase of employment concerned mostly men (+66,000) while women remained stable. This dynamic is ascribable to the over-50 age group, whose growth offset the slight decline that affected other age groups. Quarterly data (March-May 2019) show that employment rose over the previous period of half a percentage point, for an overall improvement of 125,000 persons.
The number of unemployed persons decreased by 1.9% (-51,000); the reduction involved both men and women, and all age groups, with the exception of people aged 35-49. Youth unemployment statistics are quite encouraging: the youth rate decreased to 30.5%, following a decline of almost a full percentage point (-0.7%). Even if inactive people decreased as well, second-quarter data on unemployed persons show a drop of 3.7%.
On a monthly basis, employment growth concerned all employment situations: permanent employees (+0.2%, equal to +27,000), temporary ones (+0.4%, equal to +13,000) and self-employed workers (+ 0.5%, equal to +28,000). On a yearly basis, figures are equally positive, given that permanent employees grew by 63,000, temporary workers by 18 thousand units and self-employed ones by 12,000.
Deputy Prime Ministers Luigi Di Maio and Matteo Salvini, both expressed their satisfaction, exalting the Cabinet effort to improve the job market and the Italian economy as a whole.
Source: Istat
