News Analysis: Youth unemployment makes Italy wonder

"I have not a job, I can't take it anymore, I just want to end it," read a letter written to his mother by a 25-year-old Italian who took his own life by jumping off a high palace in a town of southern Italy. His friends said he was too much responsible to bear the brunt of unemployment.

Underdeveloped southern regions are particularly hit by youth unemployment in a country where the rate of young people aged 15-24 has climbed to 44.2 percent. And behind those figures there are also those who are willing and able to work but not even looking for a job, and no longer figure into employment statistics.

Federica Porfirio, 18, is from northern Italy. Yet she also fears for her future. "I have just graduated from high school and I may enroll at university or look for a job. In both cases, I have to take into account that I will meet troubles or at the most pick a job at the beginning that has nothing to do with what I have studied for," she told Xinhua.

"Many friends of mine have got top marks but still cannot find a job. I think young people in Italy are not taught how to write a CV or look for a job, and the economic crisis has made everything much more difficult," she noted.

Giampiero Falasca, a lawyer and Head of Employment Department at DLA Piper, a global law firm, said young Italians are being strongly penalized by a labor market where many companies are undergoing restructuring amid persisting economic crisis, despite some positive signs of recovery.

There are various reasons behind the bleak picture of Italy's employment. After the economic boom in the 1950s and 1960s, the Italian industrial system, mainly made of small and micro companies, has not been able to keep pace with global growth.

Falasca said that schools and universities are not in tune with the demands of a globalized economy. "An emblematic cases is that of lacking in English language and technical subjects teaching in Italy. Moreover, studying abroad is still considered a privilege for few Italians," he added.

Legal elements add to the problem, Falasca went on explaining to Xinhua. A 2012 pension reform has extended retirement age to over 67, while apprenticeship and internship contracts that were introduced to help the youth are too complex to use.

In his view, the Jobs Act, a reform launched by the government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi last March which makes it easier to fire newly-hired workers and introduces a new form of labor contract with gradually increasing levels of protection, is the largest labor reform in the 50 latest years.

"Most of the new measures are going in the right direction by simplifying the labor market. This does not mean, however, that they will create jobs if they are not accompanied by structural reforms and solid economic recovery, he said.

Bruno Busacca, Head of Technical Secretariat at the Labor Ministry, invited to also consider some positive signs behind the alarming figures. "It is true that Italy has a serious problem of youth unemployment, but post-crisis positive effects on occupation are not immediate and should be monitored also from different angles," he noted.

For example, Busacca told Xinhua, the current year has registered so far a 30-percent drop of subsidized short-time working schemes compared to the same period last year.

In addition, the quality of work has also improved, he noted, as new open-ended contracts for workers aged below 30 have increased from 176,000 in the first semester of 2014 to 251,000 in the first semester of 2015, thus posting a 42.5-percent growth. The increase can be partly attributed to government measures lifting social security contributions for many workers hired on new contracts.

Italy was also the first European Union (EU) member State, Busacca stressed, to implement on a wide scale the Youth Guarantee, a European program introduced in 2012 to offer young people under 25 a job, apprenticeship, traineeship or continued education.

Busacca explained to Xinhua the government has also intervened in education by making work experience compulsory with 400 hours in firms for technical schools and 200 hours for high school. "The fact that the Italian education system is somehow disconnected from the labor market has become a delicate issue. Our universities are not attractive enough for foreign talents," he said.

But according to Andrea Brunetti, Head of Youth Policy at Italy's largest labor union CGIL, the government could do much more by boosting public investment in key sectors to stimulate employment. "Hydro-geological situation, for example, as well as the cultural heritage in Italy are in need of major structural adjustments which should start from public investment," he told Xinhua.

"Over the past 20 years Italy has completely failed its labor policies by trying to increase jobs through adjusting job contracts. But the labor market cannot be changed only by changing the rules," he went on saying.

The "Juncker investment plan" introduced to revive investment in strategic projects around Europe shows that the EU has finally realized the importance of public investment as a flywheel for private investment, he stressed.

"It was a first step at the European level. The Italian government should insist in this path. This is the only way to effectively create the conditions for more jobs and reverse the dramatic trend of youth unemployment," Brunetti said. Endit