Italy's employment grows 1.3 pct year-on-year in Q3

ROME, Dec. 7 (Xinhua) -- Employment in Italy rose by 1.3 percent in the third quarter of 2017 compared to the same quarter of last year, the National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) stated on Thursday.

The figures mean that 303,000 people found a job between August and September, all of them as employees and mostly with fixed-term contracts. In the same period, self-employment dropped by 1.8 percent year-to-year.

The number of workers also grew by 0.3 percent (or 79,000) in the third quarter against the previous quarter, resulting from a 0.6-percent increase in fixed-term employees and a stable trend in open-ended contracts. Self-employed workers dropped by 22,000 units (-0.4 percent), also on the quarterly basis.

Overall, Italy's job market in the third quarter showed "employment growth, stability of unemployment, and decrease of inactivity," ISTAT wrote in its report.

The unemployment rate remained stable at 11.2 percent, after two consecutive drops, while the inactivity rate fell by 0.2 points to 34.4 percent on a quarterly basis.

"Acceleration in the economic activity growth -- particularly in the industry and construction sectors -- was associated with a labor absorption by the production system that continues to expand," ISTAT also noted. Enditem