Matteo Renzi and Alexis Tsipras. April 2015. Flickr. Some rights reserved.
The latest report from the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica (National Institute for Statistics - Istat) reveals, rather impiously, the dramatic state of the Italian economy. Four straight years in recession have diminished Italy’s GDP to levels prior to 2000, bringing the unemployment rate (13.4%) to very similar figures to those of the early 1950s. Such a percentage looks much better than Greece’s (and also Spain’s, Portugal’s and Ireland’s). However, we must not forget that its controversial measuring (compared to that of other European countries) shows a strong underestimation of the data. The percentage of Italian “discouraged” workers is especially striking (14.2 % of the workforce) compared to the European average (4.1%). Likewise, official statistics do not count the 527.986 workers who were laid off by their employers in 2013, and who were paid in 2014 a pre-unemployment check called cassa integrazione a zero ore (zero hours redundancy fund).
In other words, nearly 28% of the Italian workforce, though willing to work, is unemployed. And this, despite the fact that the Italian activity rate is much lower than in the rest of Europe: 63.5% versus 71.9%. Even more worrisome is the fact that these features have become structural (as opposed to cyclical) problems of the Italian economy, as shown by the long-term unemployment rate, which is among the highest in Europe (56.9% in 2013, versus 46.5% in the EU).
