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Collapse of employment in the second quarter. Due to the Covid health emergency and the closure, the number of employees fell by 470 thousand units compared to the first quarter (-2%) and by 841 thousand units compared to the second quarter of 2019 (-3.6%). These are the latest data published by Istat in the survey on the labor market. The reduction, specifies the statistical institute, is mainly due to the decrease in temporary and self-employed workers. Compared to the second quarter of 2019, fixed-term wage earners decreased by 677 thousand units (-21.6%), while the self-employed lost 219 thousand units (-4.1%) compared to -3.6% of employment in general. Permanent employees increased on a trend by 55 thousand (+ 0.4%). It should be remembered that during the period considered, the layoffs were blocked.
The employment rate between 15 and 64 years thus falls to 57.6%., 1.2 points less than in the first quarter of 2020, but for young people between 15 and 34 years old, the most marked decrease (-2.2 points). This means that in general less than 6 out of 10 people have a job.
The unemployment rate also decreased, falling to 8.3% in the second quarter, with a decrease of 0.9 points compared to the first quarter and two points compared to the second quarter of 2019. But this is not good news, because the decrease is linked to the increase in inactivity caused by the pandemic. In general, the unemployed are just over 2 million (2,057,000). Inactive people between 15 and 64 years old increased by 5.5 percentage points compared to the first quarter and by 10 points compared to the second quarter of 2019, that is, 1 million and 310 thousand more, exceeding 14 million in total.
Provisional figures for July are better and they indicate a decrease in the inactivity rate, but also a recovery in the unemployment rate.
