Changes in the Italian Employment Structure and Job Quality

This paper contributes to the literature on changes in the employment structure, focusing on the job quality created and destroyed over the recent years in the Italian Southern regions compared to Central and Northern ones and with European regions with similar characteristics. In the 2014–2019 period, the economic gap between Central-Northern regions and the South area has been widening. In South Italy, the share of workers with low quality occupations has further in-creased, while the rest of the country experienced a growth in high quality jobs. In particular, the employment growth in the South has mainly involved those traditional sectors (such as hotels and restaurants) that employ low-skilled workers, while Central-Northern regions have been driven by knowledge intensive services and high-skilled manufacturing. Even compared with other lagging regions in the European Union, Southern Italy showed less favourable trends, especially if compared to German and French areas.