The plight of Italy's jobless youth
was again thrown into stark relief Wednesday by the latest
figures from the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development, the Paris-based group of the world's 26 most
advanced economies.
The fresh figures prompted renewed criticism of Premier
Matteo Renzi, who has made job creation, especially for young
people, one of his key pledges and signature policies.
Italy came second-last in the ranking on youth employment
released on Wednesday by the OECD.
The organization said the employment rate for Italians aged
15-29 dropped from 64.33% in 2007 to 52.79% in 2013, putting
Italy second-bottom among OECD member States, above only Greece,
which had a youth-employment rate of 48,49%.
Italy is fourth-from-bottom in the employment ranking for
the 30-54 age range, with a rate of 70.98% in 2013, down from
74.98% in 2007.
Furthermore, some 26% of young people in Italy aged under
30 are 'NEETs' - neither employed nor registered in educational
or training courses - the fourth highest figure in the OECD,
according to the report on youth unemployment.
At the start of the recession in 2008 the figure for Italy
was 19.15%, so the increase has been almost 7%.
There were more than 39 million young 'NEETs' in the whole
of the OECD at the end of 2013, more than double compared to
before the economic crisis that hit Europe.
Among young Italian NEETs, some 40% left school without
obtaining secondary school diplomas, 49.87% stopped education
after the diploma and 10.13% have a university degree.
There are more NEETs in Italy among young women (27.99%)
than among men (24.26%).
Reacting to the new jobless data, trade unionists and
opposition politicians lambasted the alleged lack of success of
Premier Matteo Renzi's job-creation policies.
Susanna Camusso, secretary general of the CGIL trade union
federation, said "these are data that confirm something that
sadly is well-known - our country has lost a quarter of its
productive activity, generating a stock of long term
unemployment, with youth jobless very high, to which no
legislation on the labour market succeeds in responding if one
does not work on investments, the creation of work and the
pension system".
Maurizo Sacconi, conservative chair of the Labour
committee in the Senate, for his part blamed falling educational
standards in schools for the figures.
"Poor knowledge of mathematics among adults and young
people alike is the principal paradigm of this failure," he
claimed.
"The same can be said about the de-legitimisation of
manual work".
"Hence the need really to reform schools through hiring
linked to that shortage of good maths teachers and for
apprentices to have the same dignity as others in the education
system".
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