Italy’s unemployment rate fell slightly to 5.0% in May, but a net 22,000 jobs were lost during the month, with the fall in the jobless rate due to people no longer looking for work, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported on Thursday.
Employment Trends
The youth unemployment rate, measuring job-seekers between 15 and 24 years old, fell in May to 15.1% from a downwardly revised 16.4% in April. Despite the jobs lost in May, in the three months from March to May employment was still up 0.5% compared with the December-February period, with 119,000 more people in work.
Employment was up by 228,000 in May compared with the same month last year, an increase of 0.9%. Italy’s employment rate, the lowest in the euro zone, slipped in May to 63.0% from 63.1% the month before.
Original reporting: Appleton, WI News Feed (HLL/CB) — read the source article.