The Structure and History of Italian Unemployment

This paper reviews the Italian unemployment experience, analyzing in particular the time-series behavior of unemployment rates along the path that brought Italy into Europe’s Economic and Monetary Union, and their disaggregated structure across geographical and demographic dimensions. High aggregate unemployment is a reflection of highly concentrated unemployment, especially along geographical dimensions but also among relatively young workers. Its evolution resulted historically from well-understood interactions of macroeconomic events and institutional configurations. We also review recent developments and reform tensions