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Italy youth jobless rate jumps to 42.6 percent

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Italy youth jobless rate jumps to 42.6 percent
Italy recorded the sixth-worst jobless rate of the EU’s 28 countries. Job photo: Shutterstock"

Italy's youth unemployment rate hit 42.6 percent last month, an increase of 1.3 percent in a month, while the overall jobless rate also increased.

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Nationally the jobless rate reached 12.7 percent in February, up by 0.1 percent in a month, statistics agency Istat said on Tuesday.

The increasing difficulty for the under-25s to find work reverses a trend seen in January, when youth unemployment fell by 0.1 percent.

It remains harder for women to get into the workplace in Italy, facing 14.1 percent unemployment compared to 11.7 percent for male jobseekers.

The negative figures will be a blow for Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who has made labour reform one of the government’s top priorities.

Last week, the Italian government said 79,000 permanent contracts had been created in the first two months of this year, owing to incentives contained in the Jobs Act.

But Italy still has one of the highest unemployment rates in Europe. Based on February figures, Italy recorded the sixth-worst jobless rate of the EU’s 28 countries.

Europe’s average unemployment rate was 9.8 percent, with jobseekers having the greatest success in Germany which boasted 4.8 percent.

Greece remains the worst place in Europe to find a job, where unemployment stood at 26.0 percent in February, according to EU statistics agency Eurostat.

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