MILANO – The difficulties of the Italian labor market also increased in the first quarter of 2021, when the long tail of lockdowns returned to weigh on the Italian economy. While, now, we can see the glimpses of the recovery with the economic activity that – has just certified industrial production – returns to grind and services that hope to grasp the restart of tourism, the picture behind it remains strongly compromised.
Istat has certified that in the first quarter of the year the number of employees fell again by 243 thousand units (-1.1%) compared to the previous quarter. Contributing to the decrease in employment are permanent employees (-1.1%) and self-employed workers (-2.0%), who are not compensated by the slight increase in temporary employees (+ 0.6%). It was above all the month of January that determined the sharp decline, because the most recent monthly surveys showed a timid recovery which in April led to 20,000 more places.
Remaining at the quarterly balance, however, it still remains strongly negative, by 889,000 units (-3.9%) less, compared to the same period in 2020. The decline involves employees (-576,000, -3.2%), especially if at term, and the self-employed (-313 thousand, -6%); it also concerns both full-time and part-time employees (-3.8% and -4.2%, respectively). The employment rate among people aged 15 to 64 is thus 56 per cent, more than 2 percentage points below the level of the first period of 2020.
The new methodology adopted by the statisticians also weighs on the figure, which considers people on layoffs for at least three months to be unemployed, now used massively. The chapter on independents deserves particular consideration, according to the Istat survey, which are now reduced to 4.9 million people: for the first time since the start of the historical series, they are below 5 million.
At the same time, the number of unemployed returns to rise (+240 thousand compared to the first quarter of 2020 above the 2.6 million threshold) – among those who have already had work experience – and continues, albeit at a less intense pace than in the previous three quarters, the growth of inactive people between 15 and 64 years (+501 thousand, + 3.7% in one year).
The unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2021 rises to 10.4% with an increase of 0.5 points on the fourth quarter of 2020 and of 1.2 percentage points on the first quarter of 2020. As for those who do not even look for work , this is an increase that has now reached the fifth consecutive quarter: +501 thousand, + 3.7% in one year, to reach 14 million 127 thousand inactive. Among these, 343 thousand (2.4% of the total inactive) are people on redundancy fund absent from work for more than three months, who in over three quarters of cases declare that they are not looking for work because they are waiting to return to their employment. details the Institute.
.