Italy unemployment crisis reaches alarming rate

Italy’s unemployment crisis has reached an alarming rate, with experts warning about the possible collapse of family-based support in the European country.

About three million Italians are registered as unemployed, a figure that has increased by almost two percent in one year, marking a new record for Italy in December 2012 . The number of young people who depend on their parents for day-to-day living has also risen considerably.

“We survive for a month on what is in this bag. I’m very keen to find what there is for my baby boy,” said the unemployed 56-year-old Salvatore, referring to the charity handout on which he depends to feed his family.

Salvatore, who has worked in three continents and speaks three languages, is back in Italy after working as a maestro at an Italian luxury restaurant in Ecuador.

An analyst at the Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics in Milan says the situation is “an economic and social disaster in the making.”

“These young people will not be economically independent as an equally young age as the previous generation,” said Arnstein Aasve. “So things are being postponed: finding stable employment, buying a house, forming a family, having children…”

The unemployment rate in Italy’s southern Campania region is double the rate in northern Lombardy, making the wages 17 percent less in the south.

Statistics showed that Italy’s unemployment rate for graduates one year after they earn their degree doubled between 2007 and 2011, reaching 19 percent.

In 2011, companies hired only 12.5 percent of university graduates and the figure is expected to increase by two points by the end of this year.

Currently some 85 percent of young, educated and qualified Italians fear an uncertain occupational future.