Share of Italians aged 15 to 74 that in 2011 were not seeking for a job but claimed they would be available to work or who are seeking a job but are not immedately available to work (click to enlarge)
I’m used to thinking that the widespread contention that ‘Italy is different’ smells to much of provincialism, but the more I delve into official stats, the more I get a qualitative difference that cannot be dismissed as such. Take this for example. Out of Italy, the highest share of potential workforce can be found in Bulgaria (9.5%) among EU27 countries or in Luxembourg (5.1%) in the Euro Zone. I just wonder if a significant share of these are actually employed in the so-called ‘informal sector’, and therefore I am not sure what this means, beyond the fact that there’s a huge amount of people who have given up, for some reason or the other, looking for a job. What this reason is should be a matter of priority investigation, as far as I see it.
