IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/h/ail/chapts/05-09.html
   My bibliography  Save this book chapter

Measuring the Long Wave. Unemployment, Discouragement and Semi-Employment in Italy, During and After the Crisis

In: Social Exclusion. Short and Long Term Causes and Consequences

Author

Listed:
  • Leonello Tronti

    (Università di Roma Tre)

  • Riccardo Gatto

    (ISTAT)

Abstract

Official data indicate a much less severe impact of the international crisis on employment in Italy than might have been predicted. But the standard measure of unemployment agreed at international level has some shortcomings. Its “objective” definition of unemployment is a poor fit with the Italian labour market. Also, the considerable increase in labour hoarding and the emergence of “semi-employment” – the alternation of brief periods of work with periods of unemployment or economic inactivity – make the state of the market hard to assess. This paper offers an in-depth examination of the impact of the crisis, using labour force survey data to measure labour underutilization, labour hoarding, discouraged, and semi-employed workers. The picture that emerges is one of a “long wave” of available labour underutilization. This wave will predictably last for years to come, calling for a decisive reform of unemployment benefits, not just to provide income support for those caught up in the long wave of joblessness, but also to permit quicker reorganization of production. The reform will have to highlight the diverse interests and roles of government and of the social partners, within the framework of a new development and industrial policy.

Suggested Citation

  • Leonello Tronti & Riccardo Gatto, 2012. "Measuring the Long Wave. Unemployment, Discouragement and Semi-Employment in Italy, During and After the Crisis," AIEL Series in Labour Economics, in: Giuliana Parodi & Dario Sciulli (ed.), Social Exclusion. Short and Long Term Causes and Consequences, edition 1, chapter 9, pages 171-198, AIEL - Associazione Italiana Economisti del Lavoro.
    • Handle: RePEc:ail:chapts:05-09
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-7908-2772-9_9
    Download Restriction: external link
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Laura Barbieri & Chiara Mussida, 2018. "Structural differences across macroregions: an empirical investigation," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 45(2), pages 215-246, May.
    2. Ricci, Chiara Assunta & Scicchitano, Sergio, 2021. "The role of Great Recession on income polarization by population groups," GLO Discussion Paper Series 766, Global Labor Organization (GLO).
    3. Chiara Assunta Ricci & Sergio Scicchitano, 2021. "Decomposing changes in income polarization by population group: what happened during the crisis?," Economia Politica: Journal of Analytical and Institutional Economics, Springer;Fondazione Edison, vol. 38(1), pages 235-259, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Labour Underutilization Measurement; Unemployment; Labour Hoarding; Discouragement; Semi Employment; Unemployment Benefit.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • E24 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Consumption, Saving, Production, Employment, and Investment - - - Employment; Unemployment; Wages; Intergenerational Income Distribution; Aggregate Human Capital; Aggregate Labor Productivity
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ail:chapts:05-09. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Lia Ambrosio (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/aiellea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.