Convergences and divergences. In the euro area there is a single currency and inflation, although subjected to strong external pressures, tends to assume more or less the same values. Otherwise, in addition to the yield differentials between public securities, what does not converge among the main EU partners are the dynamics of the labor market. Confirmation comes from the national data for the first half of 2011 released in August by the statistical authorities as well as from regional data on 2010 that Eurostat has recently made available.
In mid-2011 the number of unemployed in Italy fell to around two million units. On the same date, the count of the unemployed rose to 4,2 million in Spain, more than double the Italian figure. Italy and Spain are placed at the two extremes of the range of values assumed by the unemployment rate, equal to eight per cent in the United States against twenty-one per cent in Madrid. Better than Italy, in the Eurozone, there are Germany with six per cent, the Netherlands and Austria, where the incidence of the unemployed on the workforce even drops to four per cent.
However, differences in unemployment rates tell only part of the story. In addition to the unemployed there are, in fact, the inactive, i.e. those who remain outside the labor market because they are discouraged, incapacitated or in any case not interested in looking for a job. The rise in the number of inactive people is no less a serious problem than the increase in the number of unemployed in an economy where growth is languishing and the reserves of wealth accumulated by past generations are tending to shrink.
The inactivity rate varies in Europe no less than the unemployment rate. Among the countries where the share of those who remain outside the labor market is highest is Italy, with thirty-eight inactive per hundred people aged between 15 and 64. Conversely, among the countries where inactivity is lowest is Spain, with twenty-seven cases for every hundred. For comparison, in Germany the inactivity rate is slightly lower than in Spain and equal to twenty-three per cent. Reasoning on heads rather than on percentages, in Italy there are fifteen million inactive people out of a population between 15 and 64 years of about forty million people. Between spring 2008, when the recession began, and mid-2011, the Italian population of working age but outside the labor market grew by 620. Between the first quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2011, the number of inactive people decreased by XNUMX in Germany and by XNUMX in Spain.
It is difficult to establish whether it is less serious for an economy to have a lot of unemployment, as happens in Spain, or a lot of inactivity, as happens in Italy. What would happen in our country if the eleven inactive people for every hundred people of working age that we have more than Spain entered the labor market overnight? Would unemployment increase or could the "vacancies" be covered instead, the job opportunities in so many forgotten and non-forgotten trades that nonetheless exist? In any case, the ambiguous mix between unemployment and inactivity is the background to the serious employment deficit that Italy is showing above all in the youth segment. The most interesting data in this regard are gathered at the regional level, by comparing the situation in "clusters" of comparable territories.
Between 2007 and 2010 the youth employment rate fell from thirty-three to twenty-six per cent in Lombardy. In the same period and in the same group which brings together the most industrially advanced regions of Europe, the youth employment rate remained stable at around 50 per cent in Bavaria and 33 per cent in the French region of Rhône-Alpes. It dropped sharply, however, from 45 to 29 percent in Catalonia, Spain. In another cluster, the one that brings together the "capital" regions, the employment rate of young people in Lazio between 2007 and 2010 remained stable at around 20 percent. It remained equally stable, but at values around 38 per cent, in the Berlin region, while it decreased from 29 to 25 per cent in the Paris area and from 41 to 27 per cent in the Madrid area. According to the most recent data, today only one in four young people are employed in Lombardy against one in two in Bavaria. Only one in five young people is employed in Lazio against one in four in Madrid.
A feature of globalization 2.0 is to bring the value of work back to center stage, in addition to its cost. To be competitive, it is no longer enough to move production. It is the capacity for innovation, the plus in quality, the investment in the human capital of young people that make the difference in determining the competitiveness of the territories and their development potential. In the world of globalization 2.0, remaining on the sidelines of the job market will become more and more expensive. For a country like Italy, reducing the area of inactivity, especially among young people, is a necessary condition for relaunching growth.
