The labour input, as measured by hours worked, increases by 0.3% compared to the previous quarter and by 1% compared to the first quarter of 2025. In the same period GDP increases by 0.3% quarter-on-quarter and by 0.8% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number employed persons reaches 24 million 207 thousand and increases compared with the fourth quarter of 2025 (+67 thousand, +0.3%). This increase is driven by growth in fixed-term employees (+9 thousand, +0.3%) and, above all, self-employed workers (+72 thousand, +1.4%), which more than offsets the slight decline in permanent employees (-13 thousand, -0.1%). The number of unemployed people decreases (-110 thousand, -7.6% over three months), while the number of inactive people aged 15\u201364 increases (+44 thousand, +0.4%). After seasonal adjustment, the employment rate rises to 62.7% (+0.2 percentage points), the unemployment rate falls to 5.3% (-0.4 percentage points), and the inactivity rate rises to 33.7% (+0.1 percentage points). According to the provisional data for April 2026, compared with the previous month, the increase in the number of employed persons (+0.5%) and in the employment rate (+0.3 percentage points) is associated with a decrease in both the unemployment rate (-0.1 percentage points) and the inactivity rate for people aged 15\u201364 (-0.3 percentage points).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a year-on-year basis, the number of people in employment continues to increase, although at a slower pace (+50 thousand, +0.2%). This growth only affects self-employed workers (+4.7% over one year), while the number of employees declines, both among fixed-term employees (-4.2%) and permanent employees (-0.5%). In the first quarter of 2026, the number of unemployed people continues to decrease more strongly (-394 thousand, -22.4% over one year), while the number of inactive people aged 15\u201364 continues to increase (+320 thousand, +2.6%). The rates follow the same trend: the employment rate rises to 62.5% (+0.1 percentage points), the unemployment rate falls to 5.4% (-1.5 percentage points), and the inactivity rate reaches 33.8% (+1.0 percentage points).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the enterprise side, total jobs grow by 0.5% quarter-on-quarter, slightly higher for full-time (+0.5%) compared to part-time employees (+0.4%), bringing the share of total jobs that are part-time to 28.8% (-0.1 percentage points). Year-on-year total jobs increase by 1.5%, driven by an increase of 1.6 for full-time and 1.3 for part-time, implying a small decrease in the share of part-time. Temporary employment agency jobs start falling again recording a 0.3% decrease on a quarterly basis and a 0.6% decline on an annual basis. On call-jobs record a new significant increase both quarter-on-quarter (+3.1%) and year-on-year (+8.7%). Per capita hours worked decrease compared to the previous quarter (-0.3%) but increase relative to the first quarter of 2025 (+0.1%). The use of short-time working allowances decreases to 7.7 hours per 1,000 hours worked (-0.3 hours per 1,000 hours worked with respect to the first quarter 2025). <\/a>The job vacancy rate stands at 1.7%, decreasing both compared to the previous quarter (-0.1%) and to the first quarter of 2025 (-0.4%). On a quarterly basis, total labour cost increases by 0.3%, as in its two components, wages and social contributions. Compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, labour cost increase is still significant, equal to 2.9% due to a growth of wages equal to 2.5% and a new significant rise in social contributions, equal to 4.2%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Italian Methodological note shows the confidence intervals of sample estimates of the main not-seasonally adjusted indicators of labour supply and demand.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In Q1 2026 the number of employed people increases by 67 thousand units (+0.3%) compared to Q4 2025<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4082],"tags":[3353,3296,3467,3301,3495,3196,3229,3686,3140,3297,2968,3208,3323],"regione":[],"tema":[4067,4071,4068],"class_list":["post-128624","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-press-release","tag-earnings","tag-employed","tag-enterprises","tag-hours-worked","tag-labour","tag-labour-cost","tag-labour-market","tag-number-of-jobs","tag-redundancy-funds","tag-social-contributions","tag-flash","tag-unemployed","tag-vacancies","tema-industry-and-construction","tema-labour","tema-services"],"meta_fields":{"data_pubblicazione":"","descrizioneperiodo":"","titolobreve":"","news":"","news_rss":"","sottotitolo":""},"acf":[],"wpml_current_locale":"en_US","wpml_translations":[],"tags-info":[{"id":3353,"label":"earnings","slug":"earnings"},{"id":3296,"label":"employed","slug":"employed"},{"id":3467,"label":"enterprises","slug":"enterprises"},{"id":3301,"label":"hours worked","slug":"hours-worked"},{"id":3495,"label":"labour","slug":"labour"},{"id":3196,"label":"labour cost","slug":"labour-cost"},{"id":3229,"label":"labour market","slug":"labour-market"},{"id":3686,"label":"number of jobs","slug":"number-of-jobs"},{"id":3140,"label":"redundancy funds","slug":"redundancy-funds"},{"id":3297,"label":"social security contributions","slug":"social-contributions"},{"id":2968,"label":"statistics flash","slug":"flash"},{"id":3208,"label":"unemployed","slug":"unemployed"},{"id":3323,"label":"vacancies","slug":"vacancies"}],"categories-info":[{"id":4082,"label":"Press release","slug":"press-release"}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128624","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=128624"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128624\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":128680,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/128624\/revisions\/128680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=128624"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=128624"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=128624"},{"taxonomy":"regione","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regione?post=128624"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=128624"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}