Over half of foreigners 'came to Italy for work'

(ANSA) - Rome, December 28 - Over half of foreign residents, or 57%, came to Italy in search of jobs, national statistics agency Istat said Monday in a report on integration in the labor market.
    The report based on 2014 second-quarter data found the second most common reason for foreigners to move to Italy was family, with 39% of respondents, most of them women, saying this was why they immigrated. As well, Istat said that as of the second quarter of last year there were 2.3 million employed foreign-born residents aged 15-74 in Italy.
    Foreign-born residents make up 8.6% of the population aged 15-74, or 5.17 million people, and they suffered more from the economic crisis than natives, Istat said.
    The employment rate for foreign-born residents fell by 6.3% between 2008-2014, against a 3.3% fall for the Italian-born working population, the agency said.
    Foreign-born worker unemployment rates doubled between 2008 and 2014, Istat said.
    The agency also found that 59.5% of foreign-born residents got jobs thanks to an informal network of relatives and friends.
    Of those in work, 29.9% said they are employed at levels below their qualifications, education and training.
    In related news, a report by ImpresaLavoro think tank based on Istat data showed the economic crisis destroyed 656,911 jobs between 2008 and 2014.
    The job losses were especially high in the South and on the two island regions of Sardinia and Sicily where 486,000 jobs were lost, the report said.
    In the North, 249,000 people lost their jobs while the central regions bucked the trend, with 78,000 new jobs created in the crisis year.
    Of Italy's 20 regions, just Lazio and Trentino Alto Adige have returned to pre-economic crisis employment levels, topping them by 20,000 new jobs.
    The southern Calabria region lost the most jobs on a percentage basis (-14.83%), followed by Molise (-10.52%) and Sicily (-10.22%). The ImpresaLavoro report also confirmed that the country as a whole has added 154,000 jobs in the third quarter of 2015.
    "The ongoing economic recovery is weak and may not translate into a sensible recovery of jobs lost from 2008 to the present," said ImpresaLavoro chief Massimo Blasoni.