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 somewhat out of line compared with analogous explorations. We find evidence of very long unemployment duration of the young male labor force, higher than reported anywhere else in Western Europe, as well as large negative unemployment duration dependence. On the other hand, young Italian men experiencing jobless periods in their early careers face small re-employment wage losses. Such losses do increase with the duration of joblessness, but they are lower than reported in the USA, Canada, the UK, France, and Spain. © 2011 CEIS, Fondazione Giacomo Brodolini and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.