Unemployment in Germany vs Italy – Three lessons

Looking at sound economic growth in Germany and the long-lasting stagnation in Italy often raises the question of what is going on behind the scenes. Many Italian people ask themselves to whom or what should be blamed for, the government and policy makers, labour market reforms, education system or the culture?

While the sluggish economy of Italy suffers from a plethora of problems and engages with high rates of youth and adult unemployment, looking at the historical data and trends and comparing with its old partner Germany, is interesting when it comes to 2007…

Are they really the reasons for what has been happening in past 7 years that one dramatically impacted by financial and economic crisis while the other one not really touched with the recession. Many economists believe that the answer could lie in the labour market reforms that entered into force in both countries since 2003.

Given the strengths of the German labour market: the dual education system, highly sophisticated innovation ecosystem and companies, which spend heavily on R&D, reliable institutional framework, including collaboration with universities and research labs for supporting the innovation efforts and the top- notch German on-the-job training system and a high nominal GDP. In this post, we draw your attention to three more indicators that are missed or (if not) underestimated in the public debate on the Italian labour market reforms: supporting self-employment and SMEs, cooperation in labor- employer relations, pay and productivity.

via Tackling Unemployment: three Lessons from Germany that Italy should not disregard.