North-South gap 'narrowing' says Istat

(ANSA) - Rome, December 11 - The employment gap between Italy's wealthy, industrialized North and its chronically impoverished South narrowed slightly for the second consecutive quarter, Istat national statistics bureau said in its labor report Friday. Over half of the 247,000 new jobs created in the third quarter occurred in the South (+136,000 over the same period last year). However the South still has the nation's highest unemployment rate at 19%, according to Istat.