Unemployment insurance payments soared in Italy in 2010, according to figures released Saturday by the trade union CGIL, with more than 1.2 billion man-hours compensated for by the unemployment fund, a rise of nearly a third compared to 2009 levels, at a cost of 4.6 billion euros (6.2 billion U.S. dollars).
The statistics show that at the end of the year, 11.4 percent of Italians were without a job, an increase of more than one percentage point from 2009 and the worst year-end level of unemployment in more than a decade.
Last year, some 580,000 workers in Italy filed for and received unemployment insurance for an average payout of around 8,000 euros per worker for the year as a whole. The number of man-hours compensated for in 2010 was a 32 percent increase over that of the year before.
The sectors that suffered most were tied to manufacturing and industry: metalworking, woodworking, mechanical jobs, chemical workers, and construction. The northern regions of Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna were the hardest hit in 2010.
The figures, which are far weaker than expected after CGIL's progress report released in October and covering the first nine months in the year, are the latest indication that the economic recovery Italy hoped for as a result of a brief rise in economic growth around mid-year failed to gain traction.
The Italian economy grew just 0.9 percent last year, and many prognostications for this year are already being adjusted downward in the range of around 1.0 percent compared to 2010 levels.