Abstract

The article analyses and discusses the main employment trends registered in the Italian labour market from 2008 - year in which the maximum development of employment was reached starting from the mid-90s - to 2013, that is to say over the long crisis period the country underwent since the outburst of the global crisis. The two main trends detected - employment decline also in service strategic sectors and occupational downgrading - show that the Italian labour market reacted to the crisis in a peculiar way when compared to the other Western European countries. Far from being an outcome of the crisis, the Italian «low road» to the employment decline can be better understood if two structural institutional weaknesses of the Italian labour market are taken into account: the poor asset of the welfare regime, on the one hand, and the poor innovative and competitive character of the productive system, on the other.