Labour Minister Nunzia Catalfo said
Thursday that Italy's unemployment rate could have climbed as
high as 25% without the government's aid packages after the
outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic.
Speaking at the presentation of the annual report of
pensions-and-social-security agency INPS, Catalfo said: "as the
INPS report shows, we protected jobs, workers and businesses in
order to tackle the pandemic.
"The COVID fund and halt to dismissals averted an employment
haemorrhage that would have affected millions of workers and the
consequences would have been terrible for the whole country,"
she added.
"As the ECB's bulletin highlighted, unemployment could have
reached 25% without these measures".
She said that the government measures adopted since March to
support business and families were worth around 50 billion
euros.
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