Youth Unemployment and Social Exclusion in Italy

In order to correctly analyse the different aspects that characterise unemployment, and youth unemployment in particular, we need to start from the criteria which underlie the definition of unemployment according to the official survey criteria. From the 1950s onwards, the Central Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) has conducted what can be defined as the primary source of statistical data on employment and unemployment in Italy, namely the Rilevazione trimestrale delle forze di lavoro (Quarterly Survey of the Labour Force). This sample survey is subdivided into two parts2: 1,318 city councils (a stratified sample based on the principle of demographic width), and families (in 1997 around 70,000 families; that is, almost 200,000 persons). Among the several labour market indicators that exist, those of most interest from the point of view of this report are the following: a) unemployed persons (i.e., persons who have lost their job), persons seeking their first job, and other persons seeking a job; b) unemployed persons aged 15 years3 or older who lost a previous subordinate job due to dismissal, end of a temporary job, or resignation; they had not worked in the reference week and claimed that 1) they were looking for subordinate work and were immediately available for work, or that 2) after the work survey they were going to start a subordinate job which they had already found, or that 3) after the work survey they were going to start a new activity and had already procured all the necessary means to carry out this activity; c) persons seeking their first job: people aged 15 years or over who had never worked, or who had been self-employed, or who had decided to stop working for a period of at least one year, finding themselves in one of the positions 1–3 listed under unemployed persons (Starting from 1992, in order to make surveys conform as much as possible to the Eurostat indicators, the definition “persons seeking their first job” was limited to all those who had actively looked for a job within the 30-day period prior to the interview; d) other persons seeking a job: persons aged 15 years or over who declared themselves as not being part of the labour force (such as housewives, students and retired persons), but who were in fact seeking a job and were immediately available for work. This group also includes those who, even if they satisfied some of the previously described conditions for unemployed persons seeking a first job (see conditions outlined under group c), had not yet arranged all the things they needed to be able to look for a job, as well as those who declared themselves to be unemployed for reasons other than dismissal, end of a temporary job, or resignation.