Rome, July 2 (IANS/AKI) One out of three young Italians were jobless in May as the country’s unemployment hit its highest level in six years, official figures said Friday.
The country’s younger generation were particularly hard hit by employers’ reluctance to hire new workers after the deepest recession in more than six decades.
Of people between the ages of 15 and 24 years old, 29.2 percent were without work in May, 4.7 percent higher than the same month in 2009, said national statistics agency Istat.
Females were almost twice as likely to be unemployed, with 49 percent out of work, compared with 26 percent of the country’s young males.
Overall Italian unemployment in May advanced 1.2 percent to 8.7 percent, according to Istat.
Italy’s economy grew 0.4 percent in the first quarter of 2010, after contracting 5.1 percent in 2009.
–IANS/AKI
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