Employment Surges by Over One Million Post-COVID, Reports Inapp

Rome: Over one million additional people were reported to be in employment at the end of 2024 than before the COVID-19 health emergency, public-policy research agency Inapp said on Tuesday in its annual survey.

According to Ansa News Agency, the agency recorded an additional 1,043 million workers with respect to December 2019 and a nearly similar decrease in the number of unemployed workers (-1,009 million) over the same period. The study highlighted a record number of 24.1 million people in employment in 2024, with an employment rate of 62.5%.

The new jobs were equally distributed between men (+532,000) and women (+511,000), with a more significant increase observed in southern Italy. However, the surge in employment primarily impacted workers over 50, who over the past two years grew to make up 40% of the workforce, surpassing the number of workers aged 35 to 49.

Meanwhile, the overall percentage of inactive people remained high at 33%, which is 10 percentage points higher than the EU average for young people under 35, and reached a peak of 58.2% for women in the South.