Among the unemployed and discouraged in our country, almost 5 million people need to be brought back into the job market. As if the very significant numerical size were not enough, our country also has to deal with a misalignment between demand and supply of labor that shows no sign of diminishing. «The structural causes of the bottlenecks of our labor market are various – explains Daniele Fano, coordinator of the Scientific Committee of Randstad Research -: there are salary, demographic, social aspects, but above all the inadequacy of training courses that are not oriented towards the professions required by the market and not in step with technological innovation. And then the nature of our long-term unemployment, with over half of people looking for work in Italy unemployed for more than a year”. In this, what Fano defines as the “historic weakness of labor policies” does not help, which “relegates too many young people, women of working age, men close to retirement age among the inactive and exacerbates the paradox of a great difficulty in finding of the professional figures desired by employers, not to mention the many active people who have chosen instead to make a career abroad». However, the real turning point can “come from the Pnrr, which will invest significant resources in these areas, but whose effort should be increased tenfold in order to fully resolve the situation”.
The Beveridge curve
Observing the Beveridge curve, there is no comforting news: the tool makes it possible to analyze the efficiency of the various labor markets by measuring the percentage change in the vacancy rate as unemployment varies. The numbers analyzed by Randstad research, presented at Cnel, tell us that in the double crisis Italy experienced between 2005-2009 and 2015-2019, the “Beveridge curve” showed a sharp deterioration with an increase in both the unemployment rate than of the vacancies, reaching a breaking point from which we have not yet recovered. After the Covid period, also characterized by the freeze on layoffs, the return to work in 2022 discounts its legacy: while the unemployment rate decreases, the number of uncovered job offers continues to grow. Today, for every 100 unemployed people there are on average 24 more vacancies. And the number of people to bring back into the labor market is still important. We see.
Unemployed and discouraged
At the end of 2021, according to an analysis by Randstad research, there were 2.3 million unemployed in Italy. To these must be added those who would be available to work even if they are not looking for a job: the “discouraged” inactive people who have given up looking for a job are 2.5 million. By adding up, we thus get to count as many as 5 million people to be involved in the labor market, including many young people, women and expatriates.
The biggest problems in the South
Analyzing the territorial distribution, in all the regions of the South the discouraged predominate over the unemployed, with the highest shares in Basilicata and Molise, where the percentage reaches 70.9% and 65.9%. Among the reasons that led the Italian Beveridge Curve to worsen in the period 2005-2009 and 2015-2019, according to Randstad Research, there is precisely long-term unemployment, which causes a de-professionalisation of profiles. Although aligned with the OECD average in the unemployment ranking between 6 months and one year (15% in 2020), Italy is in first place for unemployed for more than 6 months, almost 70% of the total number of jobless people, more than double the average (33%). At the end of 2021, 49% of the Italian unemployed had not worked for less than a year, the remaining 51% for more than 12 months. 20.4% of the unemployed have been unemployed for more than 3 years. But the regional differences are strong: the unemployed over 30 months are concentrated in some regions of the South. If Basilicata, Molise, Sardinia, Puglia, Campania, Sicily and Calabria are in great difficulty, there is instead a small group of regions characterized by high efficiency where Trentino-Alto Adige, Veneto, Emilia-Romagna, Lombardy, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Valle d’Aosta and Tuscany stand out, followed by an intermediate group with Piedmont, Marche, Liguria, Umbria, Lazio and Abruzzo, characterized by medium efficiency .
The sectors
In addition to regional gaps, there are also sectoral gaps. Comparing the relationship between vacancies and unemployment, Randstad research highlights two cases in particular, that of information technology, where there is very little unemployment but great difficulty in finding them, and that of catering, where high unemployment is associated with difficulty in finding them .