Italy employment grows but Rome drops to last spot in EU

(ANSA) - ROME, APR 1 - Employment in Italy grew substantially in 2022 with the rate between the ages of 15 and 64 rising from 58.2% to 60.1%, but our country remains far from the EU-27 average of 69.9%, Eurostat said Saturday stressing that Italy is in last place in the EU for the employment rate, overtaken by Greece, which with an improvement of 3.5 points has reached 60.7%.
    Italy has become bottom of the league table for females with 51.1%, almost 14 points behind the EU average (65%), and for men with 69.2%, despite a 2.1 point improvement over 2021 (74.8% the EU average).
    Italy's employment rate in February grew by 0.1 of a percentage point over the previous month, translating into 10,000 more jobs and taking the employment rate to 60.8%, national statistics institute Istat said on Thursday.
    The rate was up by 1.2 percentage points with respect to a year ago, the institute added.
    This translated into 352,000 more jobs in February 2023 compared to the same month in 2022.
    Istat pointed out that "growth over February 2022 involved only permanent contracts, with a decrease in the number of fixed-term employees and the self-employed".
    Just over 23.3 million people were in employment in Italy in February 2023. (ANSA).