Youth unemployment duration from the Italian labour force survey: Accuracy issues and modelling attempts

Abstract

Youth unemployment in the European Economic Community remains remarkably high, and very unevenly distributed across countries. In the EEC area 16.7% of the labour force aged 14-29 were unemployed in 1986. Among the five major Member countries, the youth unemployment rate varied markedly from 7.9% in Federal Republic of Germany to 25.6% in Italy and 38.4% in Spain.’ The level and variation in youth unemployment rates are of course related to the overall employment and unemployment situation. However, there is also clear evidence that in the various countries the burden of unemployment is shared very unequally among different age groups. The ratio of youth to adult unemployment rates is 1.3 for Germany, but raises to 3.2 for Spain and dramatically to 6.3 for Italy. From a slightly different perspective, the uneven distribution of the risks of unemployment for young people across countries is documented by the share of long-term unemployed, defined as those continuously out of work for a year or more. In 1986, the fraction of longterm unemployed in youth unemployment was below 40% in Germany, United Kingdom and France, but reached 59.7% in Spain and up to 67.7% in Italy. The purpose of this paper is to investigate opportunities and problems in using microdata from the quarterly Italian Labour Force Survey in a