The glass half full of work

According to Istat, in August the number of people in employment remained statistically unchanged (-5,000) compared with July, whilst the number of unemployed rose and the number of economically inactive fell. The main development, however, concerns the revision of last month’s figures. Istat’s revision has in fact reduced the number of people in employment, which stood at 24.37 million in July and now stands at 24.35 million (a decrease of approximately 20,000). The unemployment rate remains at a record high, but has been revised down to 63 per cent (no longer 63.2). The revision also affected the number of unemployed (up by approximately 100,000) and the economically inactive (down by approximately 40,000), thereby raising the unemployment rate to 6.2 per cent (from 5.8 per cent) and reducing the inactivity rate to 32.7 per cent (from 32.8 per cent). What is most interesting is to look at the year-on-year change: over the course of a year, the number of people in employment rose by 291,000 (of which 370,000 were in permanent roles and 157,000 in fixed-term roles), whilst the number of unemployed rose by 129,000 and the number of economically inactive fell by 381,000.

Even in the June–August quarter, compared with the previous one, there were 40,000 more people in employment and 123,000 more unemployed, with 164,000 fewer economically inactive people. In practice, the number of people in work is rising; amongst those on permanent contracts, the number of jobseekers is increasing, whilst the pool of economically inactive people is shrinking. Looking beyond the provisional August monthly figure – which, as we have seen, is subject to revision – what is significant is the trend towards a robust labour market in a quarter that was fully affected by the energy crisis. The employment figures are consistent with those for GDP, which in the first half of the year recorded actual growth of 0.8 per cent and was therefore already above the annual forecast of 0.6 per cent. The Italian economy is certainly not booming, but the fact that it is showing such resilience against a backdrop of severe energy and financial strains was by no means a foregone conclusion.