The market Italian job records very strong inequalities in terms of age, gender, geographical area and educational qualification. To say it is "Employment, Skills and Productivity in Italy", a three-year project carried out by Università Bocconi within the larger project New Skills at Work by JP Morgan Chase, presented this morning at a conference.
In 2015, the most advantaged profile (male, 40-44 years old, resident in the North, with a university degree) had 50,3% more opportunities to work than the most disadvantaged profile (woman, 20-24 years old, resident in the South, with middle school or lower qualification).
By far the most penalizing feature (the one that explains 56% of the difference) is however theage, according to research findings. The data presented today suggests the need for policies aimed at younger. In Italy, the transition between school and the world of work is particularly critical for two reasons: the mismatch between the skills required by the labor market and those learned in school and the fact that the qualifications issued by the school system do not provide information on the actual skills of people. Therefore, there needs to be more emphasis on the need for formal qualifications to match skills.
The result of the mismatch is that 15-24 year olds make up the 6,5% of the labor force, but 20,3% of the long-term unemployed, while the difference between the unemployment rates of young people and adults, between 2007 and 2015, rose from 14% to 31%.
While the percentage of Italians working in positions not suited to their educational qualifications is very high, when skills rather than qualifications are analysed, the picture changes. 76% of the overqualified and 79% of the underqualified hold a position suited to their real skills. The percentage of over-skilled (14%) and under-skilled (9%) is thus in line with that of the rest of the world.
THEover-skilling however, it is more widespread among graduates (19,6%) and reaches a very high percentage (30%) among graduates in science, technology, engineering and mathematics, because the Italian production structure, due to the concentration in traditional sectors and large diffusion of small businesses, seems to offer above all low-skilled jobs, which do not allow the use and maintenance of skills.
Guido Nola, senior country officer of JP Morgan Italia, commented: “JP Morgan is committed to supporting the communities where it operates by promoting their growth and economic and social development. This research based on data and analysis and the result of collaboration with Bocconi University, is essential to fully understand the issues of the labor market in Italy and to inform our future philanthropic interventions in collaboration with local organizations to support, among others, the implementation of high quality vocational training programs that can help reduce high unemployment”.
“The partnership between the JP Morgan Chase Foundation and Bocconi University is an excellent example of collaboration between academia and business, since it allows a team of excellent researchers to study a relevant phenomenon such as skill mismatch for three years and to present the results of their research to policymakers and professionals”, said the pro-rector for the Bocconi faculty, Gianmario Verona.
