Statistics released by the national statistics bureau ISTAT revealed the extent of the damage done to the Italian employment market during COVID times.
Italy, the third-largest economy in the European Union and the eighth largest economy in the world, is shown to have had its labour market hit one of the hardest during the coronavirus pandemic.
In 2020, at a time when the pandemic and lockdowns were at their peak, Italy shed approximately 724,000 jobs. The overwhelming majority of the jobs lost were amongst temporary workers and the self-employed. Only 90,000 of the jobs lost were amongst people on permanent contracts.
The 2020 decline marked a fall in employment of approximately 3%. This was roughly in line with Spain and Ireland. Meanwhile, the only EU countries to register a larger decline were Greece (-5.1%) and Bulgaria (-3.6%).
By the end of 2021, Italy’s employment rate stood at 58.2%. This was a full 10.2 points lower than the EU average, after a 9.1 point gap in 2019. Also, when EU economies rebounded in 2021, employment in Italy grew jat ust 0.6%, a full 30+ percent less than the increase in the EU.
In May, the rate had risen to 59.8% with the number of people in work back to pre-pandemic levels. However, Italy is under demographic pressure. According to the ISTAT report, preliminary data for March revealed births down a record 11.9% compared with the same period last year.
According to Statista, In September 2021, the youth unemployment rate in Italy was 29.8 percent. This was a slight increase from 2020’s 29.4 percent and a third year of increases after 2019’s 28.9 percent.
