Italy: A tenth of industry jobs lost since 2007 claims union

Rome, 23 July (AKI) - A total of 675,000 jobs were lost in Italian industry - a tenth of the workforce - between 2007 and 2011 according to Italian trade union Cisl.

Industrial output slumped 20.5 percent and orders by 17.9 percent over the period, Cisl said. Exports declined by almost one-fifth during the global 2009 recession but increased 14.5 percent in 2010 and by 10 percent in 2011 thanks to the quality of Italian goods.

The building sector contracted by a whopping 29.3 percent between 2007 and 2011, Cisl said.

Italy's stagnating economy has suffered from near-zero growth for decades and has been in recession since the second half last year, led by collapsing domestic demand amid higher taxes and steeper borrowing costs.

Unemployment is currently running at close to 10 percent and youth unemployment hit a record 36.2 percent in May, while Italy's debt reached 123.3 percent of economic output (GDP) in the first quarter of the year, second only to Greece, according to EU statistics office Eurostat.

Italy's massive debt load currently stands at an unstainable 1.9 trillion euros.

The emergency goverment is now focusing on measures to boost growth after implementing 30 billion euros of austerity measures and trying to push through a hotly contested 26-billion-euro package of public-spending cuts and sell-offs to rein in Italy's debt.