Employability of Young Italian Males after a Jobless Period, 1989-1998

In this paper we investigate the existence of negative jobless duration dependence and the impact of jobless spells on future wages. Our findings are relatively out of line compared to analogous explorations. We find evidence of very long unemployment duration of the young male labor force, much higher than reported anywhere else in Western Europe. Despite our findings on unemployment duration, negative unemployment duration dependence is modest. While the probability of re-employment decreases also in Italy as elapsed joblessness becomes longer, such decay is small. Finally, we show that young Italian males experiencing jobless periods in their early careers face small re-employment wage losses. Such losses do increase with the duration of joblessness, but here, once again, they are lower than reported in Unites States, Canada, UK, France and Spain.