ROME: Italy’s unemployment rate fell slightly in January as job creation was aided by tax breaks to reward employers hiring people on an open-ended basis, offsetting the impact of weak economic growth.
The rate dropped to 11.5 percent from a revised 11.6 percent in December, national statistics agency Istat said Tuesday in Rome. The median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of eight analysts called for 11.4 percent. Istat originally reported an 11.4 percent rate for December.
Companies hiring in 2015 benefited from a discount on employer-paid social contributions of as much as 8,060 euros ($8,810) annually for each long-term contract. The measure introduced by Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s government was a key boost for the workforce, Istat said last week in a separate report.
Executives in both services and manufacturing industries said the break on social contributions was more important than other measures passed by the government to favor job creation such as the so called progressive-entitlement employment contract which was at the core of Renzi’s labor-code overhaul, Istat said in the report based on a survey among 6,100 businesses.
