Basically, all this post needs is a screenshot. See above. I linked to an article of ANSA’s English website that just briefly reports on Italy’s unemployment. ISTAT, the Italian statistics office, has released unemployment figures for the second quarter of 2017. Unemployment is down to 10.9%, the first time that it’s less than 11% since 2012. It’s also the strongest decrease of unemployment in a long time. Things are still going slow, naturally, but now the next ambitious goal may be to get it back to single-digit levels.
My friend who commented on my false perception of unemployment is right. Of course, unemployment is just one factor. It also matters which jobs people are able to take. How income develops. And how the country is able to invest into its future. Italy still has to overcome many challenges here. Yet, it’s good news, and I firmly believe that we focus too little on good news when it comes to our Southern European neighbors. In fact, in some German-speaking news, Italy’s second-quarter unemployment was reported as an example of youth unemployment still being insanely high in Southern Europe. So how do you ever get an impression of things developing in the right direction?
I remember a telling conversation with a Dutch friend who was visiting here during a research visit. He asked how it is to cope with the weak economy, and I said it’s actually not that bad, and quite positively developing. He said that’s an interesting assessment, because he doesn’t get this notion usually.
