Labour market

Today, Istat issues a new quarterly release on the labour market. The most recent data on enterprises’ labour demand and on people’s labour supply (the latter already published on September 1st) are presented jointly in order to provide a complete picture of employment features and of labour market trends. The contents of the release “Labour indicators in enterprises” scheduled for today are now included in this new release. From next December the two production processes will be aligned, thus the “Labour Market” release will replace both releases, the one on “Employment and unemployment” and the one on “Labour indicators in enterprises”.

In the second quarter of 2015 the limited recovery of economic activity stabilized and the GDP grew by 0.3% over the previous quarter. This growth is associated with an improvement in labour market trends (both) compared with the previous quarter and the same quarter of 2014: both labour input and employment rose and, to a limited extent, labour productivity, too improved in the first semester of 2015. The positive evolution of employment has continued in July, (and employment grew) increasing by 1.1% over the same period of the previous year (235 thousands persons) and by 0.3% in the quarter May-July, according to seasonally adjusted data.

With respect to economic activity, in the second quarter a substantial progress over the previous period has been recorded in employment of the service sector, linked to the dynamics of domestic demand, and a first recovery in employment of construction has been recorded as well.

In the total economy, the growth of employment has involved mainly employees, both permanent and temporary, and it has been more intense in the South and Islands, the area that has been most hit by the economic recession in the last few years.

From the enterprises’ side, the growth of labour input is the result of both an increase in the number of jobs and in the hours worked per capita: the latter have soared and at the same time short-time working allowance hours have considerably declined. Indications about labour demand evolution come from the growth of temporary employment agency jobs as well as from a slight growth of the job vacancy rate with respect to the same quarter of the previous year. The increase in wages over the same quarter of the previous year has widely exceeded the inflation rate: therefore, recovery of purchasing power of gross wages has continued.

Next release: 11 December 2015