Occupation: numbers and (dark) scenarios. Report
The recovery frozen by Covid and the dramatic scenarios for unemployment. Claudio Negro's analysis of the Anna Kuliscioff Foundation
The data for the month of September photograph a recovery just at the beginning suddenly frozen. The Istat data on employment indicate substantial immobility: + 6,000 employed compared to August, the algebraic sum between a small increase in employees and an equally slight decrease in the self-employed. Statistically, the increase tends to zero. It should be noted that, on the other hand, the increase in the July-September quarter is 0.3%, demonstrating a resumption that was in progress and was abruptly interrupted, however, well before recovering the decrease in employment compared to 12 months ago, which it stood at 0.9%. The overall employment rate settles at 58.2, almost a point less than 12 months ago. The inactivity rate (i.e. people who are not employed and are not looking for work) for the first time in a few months has not decreased, while the quarterly figure July-September compared to the previous quarter was equal to -1.3%: a sign that for the period of the restart had increased people's confidence in being able to find work; hope also evidently frozen. Paradoxically, of course, the unemployment rate decreases slightly (-0.1%), as a product of the invariance of the inactivity rate and the slight increase in employment (the number of job seekers does not increase but the number of employed).
It should be remembered that the number of employees is stabilized and substantially inflated by the prohibition on dismissal and to a large extent also by the redundancy fund with the reason for Covid. In this regard, it is worth making some observations on the performance of the CIG in September: according to the INPS in the month just over 23 million previously authorized CIG were usable, i.e. about 30% of those pertaining to the month of August, which in turn they were less than 30% of July's hours. This downward trend in the stock of CIG was interrupted in September by the requested and authorized hours that are approaching those of August (238 million against 279) while in the previous months it was on average 50% monthly. A further confirmation of the fact that economic operators have perceived a reversal of the trend.
After all, as Istat reports, GDP growth in the third quarter stops at 16.1%, good but still 4.7% far from the levels of the same quarter 2019. And Confindustria reports that industrial production (the main driving force of GDP growth) had a cyclical growth (compared to the previous month) of 2.3% in June and 7.5% in July, but only 0.5% in September. The new hours of CIG authorized mainly concern small and micro enterprises that use the Cassa in Deroga and the Solidarity Funds: as much as 62% of the total.
It is also interesting to observe the breakdown of authorized hours by production sector: about 50% concern tourism, catering, business services, financial services, wholesale and retail trade. These are the "non-essential" sectors already hit hard during the first Covid wave, which benefited little from the recovery of the summer months in which the manufacturing industry was a protagonist. It is difficult to extrapolate the number of beneficiaries except a posteriori, but it is likely that it does not differ from just under 1 million in the last useful survey (July). A number that can continue to survive until the expiry of the nextCig extension (currently March 31, 2021), but which prepares, when the time comes, together with the end of the ban on firing, a majestic explosion!
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/occupazione-numeri-e-scenari-cupi-report/ on Sun, 08 Nov 2020 05:59:03 +0000.