In the first quarter of 2021 the number of employees fell by 243 thousand units (-1.1%) compared to the previous quarter, and by 889,000 units (-3.9%) compared to the same period of 2020. Thus the Istat survey on the labor market. The figure is affected by the new methodology that considers people on layoffs to be unemployed for at least three months, now used massively. There was an increase of 103 thousand unemployed on the previous quarter and of 240,000 on the first quarter of 2020. In the trend comparison, the decrease involves employees (-576 thousand, -3.2%), especially if on a temporary basis, and the self-employed (-313 thousand, -6.0). 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. Istat notes this in the market survey of work.
In particular, in the first quarter of 2021 there were 22,265,000 employed with a decrease of 243,000 employed on the fourth quarter of 2020. According to Istat, the overall decline is mainly affected by the decline in permanent employees (-1.1%) and self-employed persons (-2%). Self-employed workers in the first quarter amounted to 4.9 million.
In the first quarter of 2021, labor input, measured by hours worked, recorded a decrease of -0.2% compared to the previous quarter and -0.1% compared to the first quarter of 2020; GDP increased by 0.1 in quarterly terms and decreased by 0.8 in trend terms. On the business side, the continuation of the measures to restrict economic activity in the first quarter of 2021 determines a slight economic growth for employees (+ 0.2%) and a still negative trend change (-0, 8%), albeit to a lesser extent than in the previous quarter. These effects derive from an increase in the full-time component in economic terms (+ 1%), but also on an annual basis (+ 0.4%), which is offset by a reduction in the part-time component of – 1.7% on a quarterly basis and -3.7% on an annual basis. Compared to the previous quarter, the hours worked per employee increased by 1%; also on a trend basis there is an increase, albeit more contained (+ 0.4%), associated with that of the use of layoffs, which reaches 108.4 hours per thousand hours worked. The vacancy rate increases by 0.1 percentage points on a cyclical basis and by 0.8 on an annual basis. The cost of labor, per unit of work, grew by 0.9% in economic terms, due to an increase in both wages (+ 0.5%) and social security contributions (2%). In trend terms, the cost of labor continues to rise (+ 0.8%), following the 1.6% increase in the remuneration component and despite the 1.2% reduction in charges; the latter decline is attributable to the adoption of the contribution exemption measures launched in the second half of 2020 which, albeit to a lesser extent than in the fourth quarter of 2020, continue to have an effect also in the first quarter of 2021