sim europe POLICY BRIEF 02/2016: Labour Market and Social Policy in Italy: Challenges and Changes

The Great Recession hit Italy at a time of protracted structural weakness, affected by two decades of sluggish productivity growth and a high ratio of public debt to GDP. Almost ten years later, Italy has not solved its two main problems and is affected by a social emergency that can be observed in all of thedimensions analysed by the Social Justice Index. Italy ranks in the bottom third of all the main categories of the index and 25th out of the 28 EU countries overall. From a labour market perspective, Italy experienced a slight improvement in 2015 in comparison to 2014, but this was a general trend across all EU Member States and the extent of its improvement remained strictly below average.