Istat, half a million more employed in Italy in the first quarter of 2023: unemployment at 8% – Corriere.it

The number of employed people in Italy in the first three months of 2023 exceeded half a million. This is, observes Istat in the note released on the labor market, the eighth consecutive quarter in which there is a trend increase in employment. The increase compared to the same period of 2022 of 513 thousand employed (+2.3%) and by 104 thousand units (+0.4%) compared to the previous quarter. Labor input, measured by hours worked, increased by 1.3% compared to the previous quarter and by 3.3% compared to the first quarter of 2022.

Employment: the decline and the new growth

The pandemic had generated a sharp and inevitable drop in employment. But from the second quarter of 2021, explains Istat, the recovery phase began, with growth of 2.2%, continuing at a sustained pace between the third quarter of 2021 and the second quarter of 2022, reaching a peak of +4 .1% in the former. The trend slowed down, then, in the third and fourth quarters of 2022 (not exceeding 1.5%), to return to 2.3% in the first quarter of 2023. In detail, the increase in employment in the first quarter compared to the previous quarter involves permanent employees (+92 thousand, +0.6%) and self-employed (+27 thousand, +0.5%), while temporary employees are down slightly (-15 thousand, -0.5% in three months). Even in trend terms, the increase in employment concerns permanent employees (+3.7%) and self-employed (+1%), while the number of temporary employees decreases (-2.7%); compared to the first quarter of 2022, the decline in the unemployed continued (-76 thousand in one year, -3.5%) and inactive people between the ages of 15 and 64 (-558 thousand, -4.3%).

Employee work

On the business side, the cyclical growth of employee positions intensified which, overall, increased by 1.1%, due to both a marked growth in the full-time component (+1%) and a upward push of the part-time component (+1.4%), reads the Istat press release. In trend terms, the growth of employee positions equal to 3.1% and the increase was more intense for the full-time component (+3.6%) than for the part-time component (+1.7%). Hours worked per employee also increased, in economic terms (+1.9%) and, above all, in trend terms (+4.6%); recourse to layoffs falls to 8.7 hours for every thousand hours worked.

The cost of the job

Istat reports a significant increase in labor costs per employee work unit (ULA) in the first quarter, which reaches values ​​among the highest in the historical series. Compared to the previous quarter, growth of 1.8% with an increase both in wages (+1.2%) and, to a greater extent, in social security contributions (+3%). Year-on-year growth is even sharper (+3.9%), with +3.4% for the salary component and +5.4% for social security contributions. The one-off amounts contribute to the increase in wages, while the increase in social security contributions is linked to the reduction of the tax relief interventions for 2021-2022.

The unemployment rate

The unemployment rate climbed back to 8% in the first quarter of 2023 with an increase of 0.1 points from the previous quarter and a decrease of 0.5 points from the previous year. The cyclical increase in unemployment is accompanied by an increase in the employment rate which rises to 60.9% (+0.3 points on the quarter, +1.5% on the year) and a drop in the inactivity rate for 15-64 year olds which drops to 33.7% (-0.4 points on the quarter, -1.4 on the ‘year). There are 2,013,000 unemployed, 23,000 more than the previous three months (-76,000 over the year), while the inactive aged 15-64 are 150,000 fewer, down to 12,535,000.