Italy – Labour reforms need to tackle youth unemployment

I recently came across an interesting article with the title Dangermen – Labour reform in Italy which laid out the many challenges the new Italian prime minister Mario Monti has to face. One of the most pressing problems is the unacceptable high unemployment rate among young people (15-24 years old) which is above 30 percent in Italy with Portugal, Spain and Greece performing evenly badly or worst (see link for graph). He is pushing for reforms to make the labour market more flexible and to encourage companies to take on new employees. This won’t be easy. He is up against all sorts of interests that benefit from the status quo and therefore seek to preserve it.