The labour input, as measured by hours worked, increases by 0.3% compared to the previous quarter and by 1.3% compared to the second quarter of 2025. In the same period GDP increases by 0.2% quarter-on-quarter and by 1.0% year-on-year.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The number of employed people, adjusted for seasonal effects, rises to 24 million 363 thousand (+155 thousand, +0.6% compared with the first quarter of 2026), following an increase in employees \u2013 both permanent employees (+120 thousand, +0.7%) and fixed-term employees (+18 thousand, +0.7%) \u2013 and self-employed (+17 thousand, +0.3%); the number of unemployed people increases (+31 thousand, +2.2% over three months), while the number of inactive people aged 15-64 decreases by 185 thousand (-1.5%). The employment rate reaches 63.1% (+0.4 percentage points over three months), the unemployment rate rises to 5.6% (+0.1 percentage points), and the inactivity rate falls to 33.0% (-0.5 percentage points). In the provisional data for July 2026, compared with the previous month, the number of employed people and the corresponding employment rate remain stable, the unemployment rate falls by 0.1 percentage points, while the inactivity rate for people aged 15-64 remains unchanged.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a year-on-year basis, the growth in the number of employed people continues, more strongly than in the previous quarter (+246 thousand, +1.0%), involving permanent employees (+1.0% over the year) and self-employed people (+2.4%), against a new, but more limited, decline in fixed-term employees (-1.2%). In the second quarter of 2026, the decline in the number of unemployed people continues, albeit less strongly than in the previous period (-167 thousand, -9.8% over the year), while the number of inactive people aged 15-64 resumes its decline (-140 thousand, -1.2%). The rates follow the same pattern: the employment rate rises to 63.4% (+0.7 percentage points over the year), the unemployment rate falls to 5.9% (-0.7 percentage points), and the inactivity rate falls to 32.5% (-0.3 percentage points).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the enterprise side, total jobs grow by 0.3% quarter-on-quarter, slightly higher for part-time (+0.5%) compared to full-time employees (+0.2%), leaving unchanged the share of total jobs that are part-time to 28.9%. Year-on-year total jobs increase by 1.3%, in the same measure for full-time and for part-time, whilst the share of part-time remained unchanged. Temporary employment agency jobs show a significant growth, equal to 2.0% on a quarterly basis and 3.0% on an annual basis. On call-jobs continue to rise, albeit to a lesser extent, both quarter-on-quarter (+1.3%) and year-on-year (+6.7%). <\/a>Per capita hours worked increase both compared to the previous quarter (+0.4%) and to the second quarter of 2025 (+0.7%). The use of short-time working allowances decreases to 6.2 hours per 1,000 hours worked (-0.6 hours per 1,000 hours worked with respect to the second quarter 2025). The job vacancy rate stands at 1.5%, decreasing both compared to the previous quarter (-0.2%) and to the second quarter of 2025 (-0.3%). On a quarterly basis, total labour cost increases by 0.5%, as in its two components, wages (+0.4%) and social contributions (+0.8%). Compared to the fourth quarter of 2024, continues to show significant growth (+2.8 per cent), particularly in social contributions component (+3.4 per cent) compared with wages (+2.7 per cent)<\/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 Q2 2026 the number of employed persons increased by 155 thousand, +0.6% compared to Q1<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":19,"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-134813","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\/134813","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\/19"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134813"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134813\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":135155,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134813\/revisions\/135155"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134813"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134813"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134813"},{"taxonomy":"regione","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/regione?post=134813"},{"taxonomy":"tema","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.istat.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tema?post=134813"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}