The unemployment rate continues to rise, which it rises to 12,2% in August, up 0,1% from the previous month and 1,5% year over year. This was communicated by Istat, which specifies that the present survey is the highest since the beginning of both the monthly series, January 2004, and the quarterly ones, first quarter 1977.
A phenomenon that especially affects young people: again in August, youth unemployment (15-24 years) soars over the 40% threshold for the first time. to 40,1%, up 0,4% from July and up 5,5% year over year.
A dramatic picture, outlined even more clearly from the report of the National Council for the Economy and Labor on the labor market, according to which the increase in the active population would have substantially translated into a "significant expansion of the area of employment difficulty".
The area of hardship, which includes, in addition to the unemployed, the inactive available to work, those who are not actively looking for a job and the underemployed (cassintegrati and involuntary part-time workers), according to Cnel, would have two million more people than last year: "It is a huge waste of resources, a progressive impoverishment of human capital, which risks generating alarming social consequences, above all because the most affected are the new generations".
In fact, young people between the ages of 15 and 29 are the group in the greatest difficulty: the phenomenon of NEETs (not in employment, education or training) continues to grow, i.e. the share of young people who do not have a job and at the time themselves are not in school or in training, which rises to 23,9% of the youth population, with peaks of 35% in the southern regions.
According to Cnel, young people are increasingly low-wage workers who accept working conditions that expose them to the risk of poverty in order to enter the production circuit. Moreover, the greater availability for occasional and unsupervised services has determined the growth of undeclared work throughout the country.
Conversely, the participation of the over 55s is growing, also as a result of the pension reforms: almost 277 thousand people more than in 2011, most of whom are employed (+6,8% compared to 2011). The rate of mature unemployment also grew (from 3,5 to 4,9%), which includes the redundancies.
The only partial good news comes from the female employment rate, which rose to 41,6% from 39,7% in 2007, for a number of employed women who grew by 109 compared to 2011. However, the phenomenon of gender segmentation persists : the professions in which the female presence is concentrated are few and poorly qualified.
