ROME (Reuters) -Italy’s unemployment rate rose slightly to 6.0% in August from a downwardly revised 5.9% in July, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported on Thursday, as a net 57,000 jobs were lost during the month.
The number was in line with a Reuters survey of 9 analysts which had forecast an August jobless rate of 6.0%.
In August the youth unemployment rate, measuring job-seekers between 15 and 24 years old, increased to 19.3% from 18.6%.
The employment rate, one of the lowest in the euro zone, fell slightly to 62.6% from July’s 62.8%, and the so-called “inactivity rate”, measuring those neither working nor looking for work, edged up to 33.3% from a previous 33.2%.
In the period between June and August, however, employment in the euro zone’s third-largest economy was still up by 42,000, or 0.2%, compared with the previous three months, ISTAT said.
In August, there were 103,000 more people in work than in the same month last year, an increase equal to 0.4%.
Italy’s long-running increase in employment has come against a backdrop of weak economic growth and stagnant wages.
Italian gross domestic product shrank by 0.1% in the second quarter from the previous three months.
New government projections to be presented later on Thursday will forecast GDP to grow by 0.5 or 0.6% this year, people familiar with the matter have told Reuters, after a 0.7% growth rate in 2024.
(Reporting by Antonella Cinelli, graphic by Stefano Bernabei, editing by Gavin Jones)
