The Youth guarantee programme, aimed at supporting young people better and raising their awareness of existing jobs and training offers, was introduced in Italy exactly one year ago.
Several positive developments took place within the framework of the Youth guarantee implementation plan:
- incentives were introduced to hire young people aged between 18 and 29 who had been out of work for at least six months on permanent contracts;
- hiring conditions on apprenticeship contracts were simplified to make them more attractive for employers;
- profiling methods were adopted to identify young job-seekers according to intervention type required;
- a national website was launched to broaden outreach;
- services delivered to young people (such as training, apprenticeships, assistance for employment search, etc.) were standardised in terms of costs, modalities and duration, and increased use was made of private placement agencies to improve efficiency of support measures.
However, and in spite of EU funds being mobilised rapidly, youth employment prospects remain a major challenge. Young people registered for a Youth guarantee account reached about one fifth of the total potentially interested (1.7 million young people not in education, employment or training) and those with low education and further away from the education and labour systems have been less involved so far.
euThe Youth guarantee monitoring report of May 2015 presents the following facts:
- some 595 000 young people registered for the programme;
- individual action planning provided by the employment service increased by 11 669, up to 322 014;
- young people to which at least one measure had been proposed amounted to 101 366;
- Sicily was the region with the most registrations, 16% (95 965 units), followed by Campania with 12% (73 531 units) and Lazio with 8% (45 478 units).
A pilot survey conducted by ISFOL and the Labour Ministry in March 2015 underlines that eight out of 10 users were satisfied with the information received about the programme. Satisfaction with service quality was above 85% and rating of professionalism and operators' ability to interpret expectations and motivations was positive, with a growth rate of about 80%, while satisfaction with logistics and organisation was lower.
More Information: