Presentation  Presentation  

Summary

Link: Networks e Synergies

Social Development Networks

Chapter 1

Housing quality

Chapter 2

The centre and the suburbs: different systems of mobility

Chapter 3

The family and solidarity

Chapter 4

Quality of education network

Chapter 5

Living the employment network

Economic Networks

Chapter 6

Links within the economic system

Chapter 7

The trade network

Chapter 8

Veneto agriculture network

Chapter 9

Mountain synergies

Chapter 10

Production networks

Chapter 11

The distribution network

Chapter 12

Tourism: synergy between sectors and networks between individuals

Institutional services and
networks

Chapter 13

The network for workplace health prevention

Chapter 14

The Veneto model for the integration of social and healthcare services

Chapter 15

Public Administration: services for citizens and businesses

Chapter 16

Telematic networks in Veneto

Chapter 17

The environmental and territorial checking networks

Chapter 18

Cross-border institutional networks

Chapter 19

Inter-institutional local models




5.1 - Employment: supply and demand

Top  In the European network

As the deadline for the first cycle of the Lisbon Strategy 2000/2010 draws near and targets are being checked, Europe is in the throes of one of the worst economic and financial crises of recent times. A collapse was avoided only thanks to public intervention that rescued the financial system and restored faith.
However it is this very crisis that enables the limits of the Strategy to be assessed more keenly so that it can be relaunched, both in terms of the failure to achieve objectives and the reasons behind this. It also highlights the need to implement European macroeconomic policies that can coordinate and guide EU Member States. It is necessary to introduce coordinated global strategies that ensure responsible financial policies and fair competition in the financial and trade industries.
Although it is impossible to overlook or to underestimate the results that both Italy and EU27 have achieved over these years, many objectives are still far from being reached; and this recent crisis has made them all the more unobtainable.
This also regards employment policies, as although there was a clear improvement in performance before the crisis, the trend has gone into reverse more recently. Since the end of 2008, unemployment has started to increase everywhere, a setback to the objective of reducing it significantly by 2010. In 2008, unemployment in EU27 fell by two percentage points on the figure for 2004; however, it rose again in 2009, reaching a rate of 8.9%. Between 2008 and 2009, the countries in most difficulty were Spain and the Baltic States: the unemployment rate in the former hit 18%, up almost seven percentage points on the previous year; while in the latter it stood at between 14% and 17.6%, up between eight and ten percentage points on figures for 2008.
The situation was better in Italy where 7.8% of the labour force were seeking work in 2009, a little more than one percentage point above the figure for the previous year and a long way from the higher figure at the start of 2000. Veneto, however, returned to the figure of early 2000, with an unemployment rate of 4.8% compared to a rate of 3.5% in 2008. Despite this, it must be stressed that Veneto is constantly below the average unemployment rate for Italy; indeed it has the third lowest rate in the country, on an equal footing with Emilia Romagna (Figure 5.1.1).

Top  People in and out of the employment network

According to Istat figures, although 2008 showed the first signs of a slowdown, at the end of the year, Italy had 23,405,000 workers, about 1% more than the previous year, equal to almost 183,000 units more than 2007. In 2009, the crisis also spread to the Italian labour market. The number of employed people fell dramatically and there was a sharp rise in the number of people looking for work. The number of workers in 2009 fell by 1.6% on 2008, while the number of unemployed people seeking work rose by 15%; there was, in particular, a 20% rise in the number of unemployed who had previous work experience, but unemployment among first-time job-seekers rose by little more than 3%.
In Veneto, the employment rate fell by 2.2% on 2008, meaning that more than 105,500 people were in search of work, namely 26,000 more than the previous year. Veneto also saw a rise in the number of people who had lost their job and were seeking a new one; there was also a 6.6% rise in first-time job-seekers.
When comparing other regions, it is important to look at the situation in Emilia Romagna. In 2009, Emilia Romagna saw a sharp increase in the number of people looking for work, up 50.3% on 2008, a figure second only to Valle d'Aosta (+56.6%); it also had the highest increase in the number of people who had lost their jobs who were prepared to go back into the job market and find a new one, up 61.6%. Emilia Romagna has always been a leading region in terms of the highest employment rate and among those with the lowest unemployment rate. The biggest falls in the employment rate were in Abruzzo, Campania and Puglia, which in 2009 fell by 4.6%, 4.1% and 3.8% respectively on 2008. The region that seems to be suffering from the crisis the least is Trentino Alto Adige, where the number of employed continues to rise regardless and few people are unemployed.
It is also interesting to look at figure for some regions in the South of Italy where the number of job seekers has fallen; for some time now, there has been discussion on the correlation between this fall and the levels of inactivity by people of working age who have almost lost faith in finding a job (Figure 5.1.2).
Looking at figures for individual sectors, in 2009 in Veneto it seems that industry is the sector most in difficulty as it saw its number of workers fall by 5.5% on the previous year; the construction industry, in particular, felt the squeeze as it lost more than 4% of its employees; on a positive note, trade is experiencing more favourable times as its employees have risen by 2.4%.

Top  Participation in the labour force

In 2009, both Italy and Veneto saw their employment rates fall, a setback to the reaching the objectives set by the Lisbon Strategy, which envisaged 70% employment in the EU by 2010. In comparison to many EU27 countries, which achieved this objective some time ago (Denmark leads the way with an employment rate that exceeded 78% in 2008), Italy's employment rates are still decidedly low: 58.7% in 2008 and 57.5% in 2009.
In Veneto, where employment rates are consistently higher than the national average, in 2009 64.6% of the population between 15 and 64 years old were employed, 1.8 percentage points less than the figure for the previous year.
Note, however, that although both Veneto and Italian employment rates had fallen to the values of four years ago, the fourth quarter of 2009 saw an increase in the Veneto employment rate, which stood at 64.5% compared with 63.9% in the third quarter (Figure 5.1.3).
When compared with Italy's other regions, employment figures in Veneto continue to rank among the highest nationwide. Emilia Romagna and Trentino Alto Adige came joint top, almost 4% above Veneto, which came sixth. Although Emilia Romagna is the only Italian region to have reached the European target with 70.3% employment, doing so in 2007, it, too, is suffering the effects of the crisis as its employment rate has lost more than one and a half percentage points on the figure for the previous year. The lowest ranking regions were once again from the South, which were a long way behind Italy's northern regions.

Figure 5.1.1
Unemployment rate by European State and Italian region: 2009 value and percentage variation with 2008
Figure 5.1.2
2009/08 percentage variation in employed persons, job seekers, and ex employed persons in search of work (bubble size) by region
Figure 5.1.3
Employment rates for 15-64 year olds per year. Veneto and Italy - Years 2000-2009


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Data processed by the Statistics Office of Regione Veneto are collective property; reproduction of this material is authorised for non-commercial purposes only, provided the source "Regione Veneto - Regional Statistics System Management" is acknowledged.
English translation by the University of Padova Language Centre.