The employment rate in Italy of workers aged between 15 and 64 in the fourth quarter of 2024 dropped by 0.1 points on the third trimester and increased by 0.2 points over the same period of 2023 at 62.2% but Italy was in last place in the EU for the employment rate, Eurostat said on Sunday.
Italy ranked 8.7 points below the EU average from the 8.6 points recorded over the same period in 2023, Eurostat said.
The gap with the other 27 EU members was even wider in terms of female employment which stood at 53.1% in Italy compared to an EU average of 66.3%, with a gap of 13.2 points, up from the 12.8 points recorded in the fourth quarter of 2023.
Italy's gap with Europe in the employment rate of men instead fell to 4.1 points from 4.3 in the fourth quarter of 2023, according to the data.
In the fourth trimester of 2024, 71.3% of males between the ages of 15 and 64 had a job compared to 75.4% in the EU.
The gap was even smaller for men between the ages of 25 and 54, the core age of the working population, with 87.5% in employment in the EU and 84.4% in Italy.
However, the gap with the rest of the European Union remained significant in terms of the employment rate of women and young people.
The average employment rate of males between the ages of 15 and 24 was 36.9% in the EU and 23.6% in Italy.
The gap was even wider when both men and women were considered with a 34.8% overall employment rate of young workers in Europe compared to 19.2% in Italy, down by over one percentage point on the fourth trimester of 2023, with a gap with the rest of the EU rising to 15.6 points.
Female employment lagged behind in the EU at 64.6% also for women between the ages of 25 and 54 compared to an EU average of 77.8%, nearly 20 points below the employment rate of men in the same age group in the country (84.4%) from the 19.1 points recorded the previous year.
Meanwhile the employment rate of male and female workers between the ages of 15 and 64 was 62.2% but it was the result of the 71.3% recorded among male workers and the 53.1% rgistered among female workers with a gap of 18.2 points compared to the 17.7 points registered in the last trimester of 2023.
Indeed figures showed that female workers in their youth and middle age were particularly penalized when they had to reconcile family with work, often in the absence of adequate nursery schools and full-time education facilities, according to the data.
If the gap with the European average was of 10.6 points for 55 to 64-year-olds (49.2% in Italy compared to an EU average of 59.8% ), it widened to 13.2 points between the ages of 24 and 54 (64.6% in Italy, 77.8% in EU).
The gap further rose to 18 points between the ages of 15 and 24 (32.5% in EU and 14.5% in Italy), the data showed.
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