Unemployment, that's why youth unemployment is now falling in Italy

In August, Istat recorded an unemployment rate of 6.2 per cent for Italy, at the lowest level since 2007. In one year, the number of unemployed people dropped by 355,000 (-226,000 women, -129,000 men). In the Eurozone, according to Eurostat , the unemployment rate is at 6.4%; in Germany it is at 3.5%, in France at 7.5%, in Spain at 11.3%.

Youth unemployment also dropped in Italy, we are now at 18.3 per cent, a level never recorded in ISTAT's historical series (2004). In one year, the youth unemployment rate dropped by 5.6 points. In absolute numbers over the 12 months we have 95,000 fewer unemployed people under 25. In international comparisons, we also climb positions. We are close to France's 17.2% youth unemployment rate. Spain remains at 24.7%. The Eurozone average is 14.1%. We remain far behind Germany, which is stable at 6.8% in the share of young people without a job, thanks also to the dual training system that we are trying to relaunch here.

Again according to ISTAT data, in Italy, in 2023, the share of 18-24 year-olds with at most a lower secondary qualification and no longer in education or training is 10.5 per cent, down by one percentage point compared to 2022. Despite progress, the value remains among the highest in the EU (the European average is 9.5 per cent): Italy, third last in 2021, in 2023 becomes fifth last (with values lower than Romania, Spain, Germany and Hungary). Early school leaving is more frequent among boys (13.1%) than girls (7.6%). The number of Neet people is also decreasing: their share of the total number of 15-29 year-olds, estimated at 16.1% for 2023, registers a further drop (-2.9 percentage points compared to 2022) and is lower than in 2007 (18.8%). In the EU, the Italian value is, however, lower only than that of Romania (19.3%) and higher than the European average (11.2%), that of Spain and France (12.3%, both) and that of Germany (8.8%).

In Italy, the share of 25-34 year-olds with a tertiary degree is one of the target indicators of the new Strategic Framework for European Cooperation for 2030. Despite the fact that in Italy, in 2023, the share of young adults with a tertiary qualification will have risen slightly to 30.6 per cent, it is still far from the European target (45 per cent), is decidedly lower than the European average (43.1 per cent in the EU-27) and is far below the values, which are nonetheless growing, of the other major countries (51.9 per cent France, 52.0 per cent Spain and 38.4 per cent Germany). This distance is also due to the limited availability, in Italy, of vocational short-cycle tertiary courses provided by Higher Technological Institutes, which in other European countries provide an important share of the tertiary qualifications obtained: with reference to the 25-34 age group, in Spain they account for almost a third of tertiary qualifications (31.3%), in France for a quarter (24.4%), a tenth (11.5%) in the average of the 22 European OECD member countries and 16.7% in the average of the OECD countries.

In short, there are improving figures for young people. But the data on the inactive is worrying. If, in fact, the overall employment rate in Italy remains stable at around 62.3%, it is also true that August saw, on the one hand, a decrease in the number of unemployed (-46 thousand), but on the other a growth in the number of inactive (+44 thousand). The inactivity rate, after months of decline, has now risen to 33.4 per cent, a figure that highlights the urgency of targeted measures to counter this phenomenon, particularly among young people. Inactivity is in fact growing among the latter, especially among the very young (15-24 years old). What seems to be emerging, said Francesco Seghezzi , president of Adapt, is "a sort of polarisation between those who manage to find a job and those who, instead, stop looking for work. This phenomenon appears worrying and requires targeted interventions to facilitate re-entry into the labour market'.