Unemployment at a record high in Italy since 2001, and an even more worrying real rate. This is the not very encouraging picture that emerges from the 2012 Report of the ILO, the International Labor Organization, which in the morning in Geneva presented the study which demonstrates how unemployment is growing alarmingly in Italy and in the world, up to exceed the threshold, globally, of 200 million people currently without work.
Italy appears to be among the worse off countries: in the fourth quarter of 2011, the non-employment rate rose to 9,7%, a record in the last 10 years, and the ILO also points out that "the real rate could be higher because the almost 2,1 million unemployed are added to 250.000 workers on layoffs”. Things are not better for young people: now one in three in the Bel Paese is out of work (32,6%, more than double compared to 2008), 5% of them don't even look for a job anymore, while the so-called NEETs have risen to 1,5 million (English acronym for Not in Education, Employment or Training: people who do not study, do not work or are not even in training).
Instead, they grow, and it's not a good sign, part-time and fixed-term contracts, which reached 15,2% and 13,4% of the total respectively. However, in one out of two cases (68% for fixed-term employees), according to the UN agency, this choice is not wanted by the worker but by the employer.
The ILO has also found that the main cause of the labor market crisis is policies of excessive attention to rigor implemented by governments, especially in Western countries, which are fighting the crisis focusing too much on austerity and too little on growth.
