Italians decide to reject going to work

After years looking for a position as a shop assistant, Dino Giordano decided the search for a steady job was a waste of time – he now sells boxes of tissues to motorists at traffic lights.

“With the crisis, everything is more difficult,” said the 35-year-old Neapolitan, who lives with his parents to make ends meet for him and his 10-year-old son.

Giordano is on the frontlines of a growing wave of despair in the Italian labour market, where jobs that are scarce even in good times have been wiped out by Italy’s worst recession since World War Two.

Even as the economy slowly recovers, a record number of Italians are giving up the hunt for steady work altogether, relying on family help or getting by on irregular little jobs that are not registered in official statistics.

The number of working-age Italians classified as “inactive” – that is, neither in employment nor seeking work — hit a record 14.99 million in August, the highest number since statistics agency Istat began tracking the figure in 2004.

Barring tiny Malta, Italy already had the highest proportion of inactive people in the eurozone.

In 2009, about 37.6 percent of Italians aged 15-64 were inactive, compared to 28.7 percent in the eurozone, according to EU statistics office Eurostat.

Since only those who actively have searched for work in the previous four weeks are labelled unemployed, people too discouraged to look for a regular job are considered “inactive”.

Their growing ranks depress consumer spending and provide a fertile recruiting ground for the booming underground economy.

They also are a black spot on Italy’s employment statistics.

At 8.2 percent, Italy’s official jobless rate is below the 10.1 percent eurzone average and far from Spain’s 20 percent rate. But that’s because it does not take into account the dramatic level of discouraged workers, some economists say.

“Many in the Italian government have been saying Italy is doing much better than most, but that’s misleading because there are so many who have given up looking for a job,” said Giulio Zanella, an assistant professor at the University of Bologna.

“The unemployment rate in say, Spain, is much higher than here, but the employment rate there is also higher – a greater proportion of people work in Spain than in Italy.”

More worryingly, the percentage of Italians who are inactive because they felt no regular work was available steadily rose from 3 percent in 1998 to 9.3 percent last year.

That compared with 2.1 percent in Germany and 4.6 percent in Spain, according to Eurostat.

Add to this an army of about 1.5 million discouraged Italians and the jobless rate jumps to at least 13 percent, said Giovanna Altieri, director of the IRES research group affiliated with Italy’s largest union CGIL.

Unemployment benefits in Italy also are less generous and comprehensive than in most European Union countries — around 1.6 million Italians are not eligible for any benefits, which workers can receive only if they have made contributions for at least 12 months in the past two years.

Women hit particularly hard
In the poorer south, nearly one in two working-age residents is inactive.

Most are women — they make up more than 63 percent of the inactive in the south, according to Istat, and analysts say many are young people struggling to get their first job.

Many are effectively “unwilling housewives” as the dire job outlook reinforces the already prevalent social model in the south of a male breadwinner, Altieri said.

“We have a country with two social models – a majority of the women in the north work, so a dual career model exists, but in the south there’s a family model where the male head of the household works to support a wife and children,” Altieri said.

“(In the south) when they see even their menfolk can’t find any jobs, they don’t bother going out to search either.”

Tiziana Di Marzo, a 39-year-old teacher in the southern town of Caserta, can relate. Despite boasting French and English skills, she has consistently failed in her job hunt over 12 years — public school jobs are rare and private schools only offered her paltry pay as an undocumented worker, she said.

“If I have to sacrifice my family and take time away from my children only to have to work in the underground economy, it doesn’t make sense,” she said.

Black economy boost
Italian policymakers and business are concerned that the situation is boosting an already flourishing underground sector, estimated at 16 to 20 percent of the regular economy.

A study by Confartigianato, which represents skilled trades, said higher rates of competition from the black economy – where counterfeit goods are produced and no taxes are paid – could be seen in southern areas with high rates of inactivity.

“The impression we have is that mainly in the south, this zone of inactivity that is growing could create an additional impediment to law-abiding companies, because without a stable job, these people are going to irregular jobs,” Giorgio Guerrini, chairman of Confartigianato, said.

Ilaria Mingione, a 24-year-old from Caserta, can attest to that – she joined the informal economy while looking for a steady job based on her university degree in psychology.

After spending three years at a pub earning as little as 25 euros for 10 hours of work, she decided it was not worth it – but now finds herself out of work and out of luck.

“I’ve abandoned my entire job hunt. What’s the point? There are no jobs and the situation keeps getting worse,” she said.

“I’m thinking of leaving Italy and starting somewhere new. For now I’m resting my hopes on winning the lottery jackpot.”