The ISTAT data on employment for December 2019 is not sensational, nor such as to represent an alarm bell: simply the signal of an economy which, as has been evident for some time, is no longer growing and in a unfavorable international situationbegins to slide down. To grasp the picture as a whole, it is worth supplementing the data on the labor market with some economic indicators. The data on employment in itself are not sensational, even if unlike in November, this time they all have the "minus" sign, albeit for marginal quantities (as indeed in November for the "plus" sign).
Employed people decreased by 0,3% compared to November in an absolutely uniform way between employees and self-employed; the fact that in trend terms (i.e. compared to a year ago) there is an increase (+0,6%) demonstrates how the growth curve in the first half of the year has gradually begun to decline until it tends towards a negative value, highlighting not a contingency but a trend. Within this trend, the trend reversal between permanent employees and fixed-term employees is remarkable, and this is a new fact: the former drop by 0,5% and fall below the June levels, the latter increase by same percentage and reach the highest number ever recorded: 3.123.000, almost 30.000 more than when the legendary Dignity Decree came into force, about 1% more; it should be noted that compared to the same period, stable contracts grew by 197.000 units, equal to an increase of 1,3%, proving the substantial uselessness of the Decree.
The stagnation of the labor market is confirmed by the upward adjustment (+0,1) of the inactivity and unemployment rate. However, the picture is made more gloomy by the general economic indicators, in particular by the data just provided by theISTAT reporting GDP down by 0,3% in the last quarter, reversing a trend which, albeit with modest quantities, had recorded slight growth in 2019. The relationship between GDP and employment is fairly obvious, but he points it out above lavoce.info Francesco Daveri, who finds a direct relationship between GDP performance and industrial production. With a declining GDP and decreasing industrial production (ISTAT: November orders -4,3% compared to 12 months earlier) expectations for employment are starting to be a little worrying.
