Aggregate Unemployment in Italy, 1960-1983

Abstract

When compared with other countries' experiences, the Italian performance on the unemployment front is interesting in many respects. As indicated in Table 1, the Italian unemployment rate has been consistently above that of major Western countries since the 1960s. The differential in unemployment rates tended to decrease between the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s because the initial rise in unemployment following the oil shock was less pronounced in Italy than in most other countries. Since that time the rise in unemployment has been pretty universal and steady, but Italian unemployment has risen somewhat faster than the average; thus the differential with the OECD has grown from 1 percentage point to over 2 by the early 1980s, though the EEC as a whole has performed even worse. In assessing these trends, one should keep in mind that unemployment, as well as many other Italian statistics, is subject to an unusual margin of error, reflecting in part the large role played by the 'underground' economy. Furthermore, as for other countries, the aggregate Italian unemployment rate hides substantial differences in unemployment rates for different groups of people in society (see Section I below). Though extremely important, such