\n By Euronews\n<\/p>\n
\n Published on
\n 08\/01\/2026 – 14:59 GMT+1\n <\/p>\n
Italy\u2019s labour market lost momentum in November 2025, with a rare combination of falling employment and falling unemployment pointing to a rise in inactivity, according to Istat. <\/p>\n
Employment fell by 34,000 on the month, taking the employment rate down to 62.6%.<\/p>\n
The decline was not evenly spread. It mainly hit women, the self-employed and workers on fixed-term contracts. <\/p>\n
By age, the weakest results were among 15\u201324s and the 35\u201349 group, while 25\u201334s bucked the trend. Employment was broadly stable among men, those on permanent contracts and the over-50s.<\/p>\n
Inactivity rises despite lower unemployment<\/p>\n
At the same time, the number of people looking for work fell by 2% or around 30,000 fewer than the previous month, pulling the unemployment rate down to 5.7% and youth unemployment to 18.8%. <\/p>\n
But the drop in unemployment did not signal a healthier market, because it coincided with a marked rise in inactivity. <\/p>\n
Istat said the number of those aged 15-64 who were not in work and not actively seeking a job increased by 72,000 (up by 0.6%) in November, lifting the inactivity rate to 33.5%. <\/p>\n
The rise was broad-based across both sexes and most age groups, with 25\u201334s again the main exception.<\/p>\n
Longer-term picture stronger than the monthly dip<\/p>\n
Looking beyond the month, the trend is less downbeat. Over the three months to November 2025, employment rose 0.3% compared with the previous three months or a net increase of 66,000, alongside a fall in unemployment. <\/p>\n
On an annual basis, Italy had 179,000 more people in work than in November 2024, a rise of 0.7%.<\/p>\n
The year-on-year figures also point to a shift in the make-up of jobs. Permanent employees increased by 258,000 and the self-employed by 126,000, more than offsetting a fall of 204,000 in fixed-term workers. <\/p>\n
Overall, the employment rate rose by 0.3 percentage points over the year, while both unemployment and inactivity declined \u2014 suggesting that despite November\u2019s setback, the underlying direction remains broadly positive.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"By Euronews Published on 08\/01\/2026 – 14:59 GMT+1 Italy\u2019s labour market lost momentum in November 2025, with a rare…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":235805,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[72,113,61,60,102,150,120038,2237],"class_list":["post-235804","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-economy","tag-business","tag-economy","tag-ie","tag-ireland","tag-italy","tag-jobs","tag-the-world-of-work","tag-unemployment"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235804","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=235804"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/235804\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/235805"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=235804"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=235804"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ie\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=235804"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}