The decision of the Italian government, headed by Giorgia Meloni, shows that only six months after cutting subsidies, a decision that generated controversy in the country, it was right to reduce the number of unemployed by more than 100,000 people. The latest available data from the European Commission’s statistical office (Eurostat), from December 2023, already shows a drop in unemployment of 127,000 people compared to five months earlier.
Last August 2023, the government limited the Renta Ciudadana (Renta Ciudadana), equivalent to the Spanish Ingreso Mínimo Vital (IMV) only to households with disabled members, and those under or over 60 years of age with low incomes. The equivalent of the Italian IMV had been introduced by Giuseppe Conte in 2019, as a subsidy for the unemployed and people without a minimum income above the poverty line. A year ago, one million families were receiving RoC, and after the executive’s decision, this figure has been drastically reduced to around 600,000, almost half.
Regardless of the positive effect on the Italian economy of the reduction of benefits for people with the capacity to look for work, the trend in the country since Meloni’s arrival in power has been one of job creation, as reflected in the total number of unemployed, which stands at 1.83 million, the lowest in the last fifteen years.
As LA GACETA reported in December, employment in Italy reached record levels in the first year of the new government. The employment rate has risen this year to 61.8 percent, the highest since 1977. In the third quarter of the year, there was a total increase in employment of 0.4 percent over the previous three months, which meant a total of 104,000 new jobs.
