A new role for the social services: fighting unemployment in the time of Covid-19

ABSTRACT

Following the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak, the dramatic number of unemployed people has led institutions other than job centres to step in. Organisations normally devoted to social services have come together to fight the rising problem of occupational inactivity worsened by the current pandemic. In this analysis, we illustrate (i) who the occupationally inactive individuals most likely to reach out to the social services are, and (ii) the effectiveness of on-the-job training programmes organised by such institutions. We focus on the work of a Directorate of Social Services seated in Central Italy and targeting people unemployed or unable to work due to the SARS-CoV-2 crisis. Results show that individuals who apply for training programmes organised by social services are mostly men who are unemployed, receive a subsidy, and previously worked in the hotel and catering industry. Participation in the training programme implemented by the Directorate of Social Services seems to be especially beneficial for male candidates with secondary education and an employment history characterised by short-term employment.

RIASSUNTO

A seguito dell'epidemia da SARS-CoV-2, il numero drammatico di disoccupati ha portato istituzioni diverse dai centri per l'impiego a intervenire. Le organizzazioni normalmente dedicate ai servizi sociali si sono unite per combattere il crescente problema dell'inattività lavorativa aggravato dall'attuale pandemia. In questa analisi, illustriamo i) chi sono gli individui professionalmente inattivi che, con maggiore probabilità, si rivolgono ai servizi sociali e ii) l'efficacia dei programmi di formazione sul lavoro organizzati da tali istituzioni. Ci concentriamo sul lavoro della Direzione dei Servizi Sociali con sede nel Centro Italia e rivolta alle persone disoccupate o inabili al lavoro a causa della crisi SARS-CoV-2. I risultati mostrano che le persone che fanno domanda per i programmi di formazione organizzati dai servizi sociali sono per lo più uomini che sono disoccupati, ricevono un sussidio, e hanno precedentemente lavorato nel settore alberghiero e della ristorazione. La partecipazione al programma di formazione attuato dalla Direzione dei Servizi Sociali sembra essere particolarmente vantaggiosa per i candidati di sesso maschile con istruzione secondaria e una storia lavorativa caratterizzata da occupazione a breve termine.

KEYWORDS:

• Active labour market policy
• COVID-19
• job training
• social services
• unemployment

PAROLE CHIAVE:

• Politica attiva del mercato del lavoro
• Covid19
• Tirocinio lavorativo
• Servizi sociali
• Disoccupazione

1. Introduction

The recent pandemic has caused an exaggerated number of firms to close in Italy. Compared to the first quarter of 2019, the number of units has fallen by 30,000 at the end of the first quarter of 2020.¹ In particular, due to the lock-down and the measures of containment adopted by the government to stop the spread of the SARS-CoV-2 virus, numerous activities have completely stopped. With the ban on social gatherings, the cultural and agronomic industries have been profoundly affected by it. Restaurants, cinema, theatres, and hotels remained closed for months, while only a few progressively reopened. As a consequence, firms had to inevitably recur to the laying off of workers, especially those employed with atypical forms of contract such as on-call or seasonal workers. In other words, the pandemic has provoked a real career shock, and not just in Italy (Akkermans et al., 2020).

While the government aims to support individuals in economic difficulty who are currently unemployed or unable to work due to the pandemic, proactive institutions have stepped in to support individuals from a human capital perspective as well. This is in line with the argument by Blustein and Guarino (2020) that the pandemic has caused an existential loss that requires policy makers to account for survival and social connection. The set of measures publicly implemented to retrain workers and provide them with the necessary skills for a reinstatement in the labour market are usually managed by the Agencies of Labour and their job centres. Social services usually devote their activities to support vulnerable categories affected by social exclusion and other socially related issues. Among them, social services deal with individuals who have difficulty to be reinstated in the labour market. Progressively, they have started to engage with active labour market policy by providing individuals at the margin of society with job training programmes, internships, and other measures aimed at their occupational integration. Job assistance, for instance, is the main instrument used by the Directorate of Social Services to help reinstate individuals into the labour market. With respect to its effectiveness, Fougère et al. (2005) have showed that job-search assistance organised by the public employment service increases the probability of matching between searcher and employers. This was also confirmed in recent a study by Manoli et al. (2018), where job-search assistance positively affects individuals’ employment chances and earnings even in the longer term.

Because of the strong impact of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic on the mental health of the population, it is useful to point out how supported employment proves to be effective also on individuals with mental disorders, such as anxiety and depression (Marshall et al., 2014) —more and more common after the outbreak of the pandemic (Paul & Moser, 2009; Pfefferbaum & North, 2020). On this subject, early analyses by Viswesvaran et al. (1999) and Krause (1986) already showed how social support contributes to mitigating perceived stressors related to the world of work and stressful life events more in general. This was then confirmed by Kinman et al. (2011) with respect to emotional exhaustion from work. Individuals need an institution able to create a ‘bridge to an inclusive and solidarising community’ (Fargion et al., 2018, p. 627). Social services could take on such accountability.

In Italy, social services were officially recognised by the law with the Legislative Degree 112 in 1998, with respect to their role in education, professional training, health assistance, social services, and cultural activities. The subsequent Law 328 of 2000 further identified the organisation of social services at the regional and local levels. Italian social services were originally introduced to assist individuals in problematic situations of need (Lgsl. Decree 112/1998). Unemployed individuals and individuals unable to work in consequence of the pandemic, which had serious economic and social repercussions for the community, represent one of the targets of such institutions.

The pandemic has dramatically changed the way we live and work. While agencies of labour have always been the official institution of reference for unemployment assistance, social services can guide citizens as they face even more psychologically challenging situations. On this subject, the analysis by Knapp et al. (2013) for individuals with vulnerable mental health observed how, compared to standard vocational services, individual placement and support is likely to increase occupational opportunities for participants. The very nature of social services is reflected in a more social and human interest to take care of individuals and support them in job haunting. The possibility to participate in an on-the-job training experience after being interviewed and profiled by the staff of the Directorate of Social Services represents an occasion for the unemployed people to increase their occupational success.

In this paper, we look at the effectiveness of participation in a measure offered in Tuscany, Central Italy, by the Directorate of Social Services (DSS) in the Municipality of Florence. In particular, to be eligible to the training programme provided by the DSS, individuals had to register with the Directorate between 6 and 22 July 2020 and prove that they resided in Florence and had lost their job or were unable to work due to the current pandemic. We focus on this Italian region due to (i) its well-established tradition of trade unions, who protect vulnerable categories of workers also in need of social support since 1948; (ii) its dependency on European funds for covering expenses dedicated to reskilling the workforce; and (iii) its decreasing levels of unemployment, which make it a resourceful case for similar neighbouring European regions. Because of the critical conditions of the labour market and the uncertainty surrounding sectors such as the culture and restaurants business, where most of the participants used to work, the offer by the Directorate of Social Services is only likely to provide a short-term alternative to such occupationally inactive individuals. On the other hand, the advantage of taking part in the new and pandemic-specific programme offered by the social services is evident: individuals will make use of their time to learn new skills, put them into practice, extend their social networks, and re-approach the labour market. This argument is in line with the findings by Wunsch (2013), who suggests targeting such programmes mainly at unemployed individuals with low initial exit rates to employment.

The initiative carried out by the Italian social services is relevant in that it highlights the social component that occupationally inactive people seek in a pandemic context that affects the whole of Europe. Particularly, it connects with the German policy framework, which consider interventions for the single individual as occasions to ‘affirm social citizenship, ensure rights and promote social equality’ (Lorenz, 2016, p. 4). The collectivist nature of Italian institutions allows for inter-administrative subsidiarity among institutions. In other words, social services can be used as complementary sources to job centres when it comes to providing job orientation services to the unemployed people. This is also line with the Danish organisational model of social work for occupation. Progressively, Italy can overcome the passive perspective that social services may have with respect to activation (Tabin & Perriard, 2016) and implement the collaborative principles typical of the labour market institutions present in countries like Denmark. Namely, support for individual placement can be organised by both experts of employment, as well as social workers and therapists (Moen et al., 2020). Indeed, if such set of measures prove successful, similar work by the social services during the Covid-19 pandemic could be helpful in assisting other vulnerable categories of the population, including the older people (Carter Anand et al., 2021), the youths (Munford, 2021), and the children (Devlieghere & Roose, 2021).

The initiative promoted by the Directorate of Social Services to fight unemployment represents a possibility for Italy to converge to a more efficient system of welfare, where job opportunities are improved together with social support. In the case of Norway and other regions of Northern Europe, studies have already shown the critical relationship that exists between employment and social capital (Heggebø et al., 2019). On this subject, the Covid-19 pandemic may work as an incentive for Italy to re-evaluate the role of the social services. Finally, any conclusions that can be drawn for Italy could justifiably be used to address similar issues in other parts of Southern Europe where social services suffer from policies of austerity (Garrett & Bertotti, 2017). For Spain, Pastor-Seller et al. (2019) illustrated the difficulty faced by the social services after neo-liberal policies were implemented by the government in consequence to the economic crisis. Negative repercussions of such policies were significant also in the long term (Verde-Diego et al., 2021). A recent study by Morales-Villena et al. (2020) also demonstrates the extent to which opportunities provided by mutual support and solidarity can help fight against social exclusion.

After being introduced in mid-twentieth century Italy as a fragmented set of social interventions, the role social work progressively became that of ‘[mediating] between citizens’ needs and institutional resources’ (Campanini, 2007, p. 107). A recent survey by Facchini and Lorenz (2013) further underlined the importance that social workers attribute to the users of social services. The intervention of Italian social services, if even moderately successful in reintegrating those who lost their job due to Covid-19, can inspire the social services of similar European countries originally characterised by institutional austerity to pave the way for more collaborative labour market institutions.

2. Data & methods

2.1 Procedure

In line with the argument by Fleuren et al. (2020) that flexible forms of assistance incentivise participation in training programmes, the offer made by the Directorate to individuals requires a moderate level of commitment that allows individuals to use their time for alternative activities. In sum, the on-the-job training programme provided by the social services does not aim to replace official reskilling measures, but rather to give participants a boost with respect to their reinstatement into the labour market. Pursuant to the findings by Ocampoa et al. (2020) that programmes such as internships in firms contribute to increasing future career adaptability to a large extent, we are interested in understanding whether individuals who took part in the on-the-job training programme provided by the Directorate of Social Services (DSS) in the Municipality of Florence through local firms succeeded in exiting their condition of occupational inactivity.. On this occasion, social workers acted as intermediaries between the vulnerable categories of the population who reached out to the DSS and local firms that were willing to offer occupational experiences to them.

The data described in this article were collected by the social workers of the DSS in the summer of 2020. S In order to be considered eligible for the programme, individuals had to complete the registration form according to the institution's deadline, as well as provide the entirety of documents required by the Directorate. In the first screening process, 441 individuals registered with the Directorate of Social Services in the Municipality of Florence. Among them, 389 individuals (88.2% of the sample) were declared as eligible by the Directorate (Table 1). These individuals had then the possibility to participate in hands-on working experience at local firms collaborating with the Directorate in question. The on-the-job training programme was mainly organised in small and private firms in Florence dealing with retail and administration services, cleaning services, tourism, or cooperatives. The training was offered for an average of 33 hours per week and supervised by an expert tutor in the firm.

Table 1. Distribution of Demographic Characteristics by Eligibility.

Covariates	Non-Eligible [Mean]	Eligible [Mean]
Demographic characteristics
Age (years)	42.2 (2.9) t = 0.844	40.1 (0.8) p -Value = .399
Gender (Female = 1)	0.365 (0.067) t=−1.152	0.450 (0.025) p -Value = .250
Italian	0.275 (0.063) t=−0.274	0.293 (0.023) p -Value = .785
Children (number)	0.308 (0.093) t=−2.755	0.684 (0.048) p -Value = .006
Disabled in family (number)	0 (0.000) t=−1.261	0.051 (0.015) p -Value = .205
Benefit Dependency (Subsidy = 1)	0.250 (0.061) t=−3.661	0.517 (0.025) p -Value = .000
Occupational sector
Hotel industry	0.316 (0.110) t=−0.478	0.371 (0.031) p -Value = .063
Catering services	0.106 (0.072) t = 0.196	0.092 (0.019) p -Value = .845
Theatre and cinema	0.105 (0.072) t = 1.141	0.072 (0.014) p -Value = .255
Restaurant business	0.474 (0.118) t=−0.150	0.492 (0.032) p -Value = .881
Employment status
Unemployed	0.250 (0.112) t=−1.133	0.392 (0.031) p -Value = .259
On-call contract	0.250 (0.112) t = 0.208	0.227 (0.026) p -Value = .836
Seasonal worker	0.000 (0.000) t=−0.996	0.059 (0.015) p -Value = .320
Short-term contract	0.313 (0.120) t = 1.030	0.204 (0.025) p -Value = .303
Long-term contract	0.188 (0.101) t = 0.827	0.118 (0.020) p -Value = .409
Obs.	52	389

Notes: The data are provided by the Directorate of Social Services at the Municipality of Florence, Italy, and refer to individuals registered as unemployed or unable to work due to the pandemic in 2020. In this table, the analysis is done for the demographic characteristics of the individuals; namely, their gender, nationality, age, and household composition. For convenience we show Italy's country dummy. Standard errors are expressed in parentheses. Overall, individuals come from 67 countries. Two-sample t-test statistics (difference) are also showed in the table.

Following their registration, individuals were asked to complete a survey containing information on personal and occupational characteristics. Particularly, individuals were asked about key demographic variables such as their age, gender —due to the significant gender discrimination against female job seekers present in the Italian labour market (Del Bono & Vuri, 2011)—, as well as the number of children and disabled members present in the household. With respect to the employment history of the individuals registered with the Directorate of Social Services, we also collected information on whether, at the time of registration, the individual was a beneficiary of unemployment benefits or another form of financial support; as well as regarding their current job situation —ranging from unemployment to on-call or seasonal contracts. We also requested details regarding the occupational sector of reference of the individual; namely, whether she is normally employed in the hotel industry, the restaurant business, or the cinema and theatre industry.

2.2. Participants

Once obtained the first wave of data, we were able to study the composition of the total sample of individuals who reached out to the social services. With respect to the demographic characteristics of the sample, one can observe female and male candidates are proportionally distributed among the eligible and non-eligible groups. Among eligibles, we observe a female component of 55% and a male component of 45%. In the group of non-eligibles, 63% of the individuals are women and 37% are men. This is also true for age cohorts. When we distinguish between individuals younger or older than 30, for both eligible and non-eligible groups we observe 23% of individuals below the age of 30 and 77% of individuals older than 30. With respect to children, the majority of individuals registered with the Directorate of Social Services have no children (62%), one child (17%), or two children (17%). The pattern remains valid when we only examine the group of eligibles. Only 4 individuals have disabled members in their household. Unsurprisingly, most of the individuals registered with the Directorate of Social Services were born in Italy (128 individuals out of 389), followed by Bangladesh (12.7%), the Philippines (7.3%), and Albania (6.4%).

When we look at the employment status of the individuals, we observe that 39.4% of the individuals are unemployed; 22.9% are employed with an on-call contract; 21% have a short-term or flexible contract; 12% are employed with a long-term contract; and 5.5% are seasonal workers. All individuals who signed up with the Directorate of Social Services for this on-the-job training programme are registered as either unemployed or unable to go to work. In this regard, it is relevant to mention that 36.7%² of the individuals registered with the Directorate of Social Services work in the restaurant business, followed by workers in the hotel industry, theatre, or cinema. 49% of the individuals receive an unemployment benefit or other forms of financial support.

Overall, the data suggest that most of the individuals registered with the Directorate of the Social Services (DSS) to increase their post-pandemic job opportunities are Italian, older than 30 —in line with the argument that older people tend to be more likely to remain unemployed in situations of economic crisis (Rowley & Feather, 1987)—, and unable to work at their current job due to Covid-19. Indeed, those who registered to participate in the DSS programme lost their job due to the impossibility of working in a safe environment:most of them previously worked for non-essential cultural, food, and social enterprises that shut down due to the pandemic. This supports statistical findings by the OECD with respect to the categories of professionals most significantly hit by the current health and economic crisis.

3. Results

After having registered with the Directorate of Social Services in the first stage, individuals were required to confirm and update their registration form and meet with the social workers. Between the first registration and the actual signing of a pact of service between individuals, the Directorate, and the local firm, some individuals complied to the request of the DSS to provide full documentation and were considered eligible to participate in the programme. Vice versa, originally eligible individuals cancelled their final appointment with the social workers and were excluded from the programme. Following a final screening of registered individuals, social workers at the Directorate of Social Services in Florence had 78 individuals sign an official document, or pact of service, to participate in the on-the-job training programme between November 2020 and June 2021. Of these, 16 abandoned the programme after they had started their training at the local firm assigned to them for several reasons; including, sudden job offers or interest in signing up for other external types of training. Overall, 43.6% of the participants was offered a job at the end of the training. In this section, we illustrate to what extent the participation in the programme organised by the social services has been successful by distinguishing among sub-categories of interest —namely; gender, education, previous employment history, children, and nationality (Table 2).

Table 2. Post-Training Employment by Demographic and Occupational Characteristics.

Employment post-training	Not employed	Employed	Obs.
Gender
Female	19 (61.3%)	12 (38.7%)	31
Male	16 (51.6%)	15 (48.4%)	31
Education
None	3 (42.9%)	4 (57.1%)	7
Middle-school diploma	3 (30%)	7 (70%)	10
High-school diploma	16 (55.2%)	33 (44.8%)	49
University degree	11 (91.7%)	1 (8.3%)	12
Missing	.	.	4
Nationality
Albania	3 (50%)	3 (50%)	6
Bangladesh	1 (100%)	0	1
Bosnia	1 (100%)	0	1
Cameroon	1 (50%)	1 (50%)	2
Ecuador	1 (100%)	0	1
Philippines	0	1 (100%)	1
Japan	1 (100%)	0	1
Italy	20 (55.6%)	16 (44.4%)	36
Moldova	0	1 (100%)	1
Peru	0	3 (100%)	3
Romania	1 (100%)	0	1
Senegal	1 (100%)	0	1
Syria	1 (50%)	1 (50%)	2
Spain	1 (100%)	0	1
Togo	1 (100%)	0	1
Tunisia	1 (100%)	0	1
Ukraine	1 (100%)	0	1
Number of children
0	20 (54%)	17 (46%)	37
1	4 (40%)	6 (60%)	10
2	7 (77.8%)	2 (22.2%)	9
3	0	1 (100%)	1
5	0	1 (100%)	1
Missing	.	.	4
Employment history
Long-term contract	4 (44.7%)	2 (33.3%)	8
Short-term contract	15 (53.6%)	13 (46.4%)	28
Missing	.	.	28

Notes: The data are provided by the Directorate of Social Services at the Municipality of Florence, Italy, and refer to individuals registered as unemployed or unable to work due to the pandemic in 2020.

As regards patterns of nationality, Italians represent the highest proportion of participants. Of these, 44.4% have become employed after the training organised by the social services in Florence. When studying gender discrepancies, we observe that among participating individuals, 48.4% of the male population were offered a job compared to 38.7% of the women. This is not surprising given that female employment tends to be lower in this area of the country. According to the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), in 2020 female employment in Tuscany reached 59.5%, while employed men represented 72.9% of their group.³ Overall, however, the gap between women who did and did not find a job following the occupational training is not exaggeratedly large, which suggests social accompaniment may constitute a factor of comparative advantage for the struggling female population.

Following the outbreak of the pandemic, women are also more likely to downshift their career according to recent analyses by McKinsey & Co.⁴ As stressed by the United Nations Entity for Women, ‘the impacts of crises are never gender-neutral, and Covi⁵’. Connected to this, it seems relevant to stress that it is usually candidates without children, or with at most one child, that benefit the most from the training programme organised by the Directorate of Social Services. These groups are offered employment, respectively, 46% and 60% of the time. Evidently, the range of job opportunities changes depending on childlessness (Bagavos, 2010), which favours employment (Olaniyan et al., 2021). As regards parents, social support in job search may help reduce those work-family conflict experiences (Kossek et al., 2011) originated from the outbreak of the pandemic in disfavour of female participation in the labour market. Even more so in a country characterised by a failing child-care system (Del Boca, 2002).

Most importantly, our results align with the strand of literature on active labour market policy that finds stronger effects for the less-educated individuals. Despite less-educated people's lower employment opportunities (Solga, 2002), in our sample we observe that 70% of individuals who hold a middle-school diploma find a job after participating in the programme, while only 8.3% of university degree holders are employed afterwards. This is in line with Bonnal et al. (1997) and Escudero (2018), who observed higher occupational benefits for participants in training programmes with a low educational background. Individuals with low levels of education are also more likely to experience social exclusion (Coumans & Schmeets, 2015). Thus, this group might be already apt to dealing with the social services and might prefer increasing their job opportunities by recurring to the DSS training programmes rather than those organised by the regular job centres. Additionally, most participants previously worked at a job with a short-term or atypical contract, including seasonal or on-call work. After taking part in the on-the-job training experience offered by the Directorate of Social Services, 46.4% of them was offered a job; usually, at the same firm where they did the training. Along with informal employment, flexible and precarious forms of jobs have significantly increased in contemporary societies (Arnold & Bongiovi, 2012). Individuals who experienced short-term employment may be more exposed to unemployment in case of an economic crisis and be, therefore, more likely to recur to the social services to participate in training programmes.

4. Discussion

Since last year, institutions that are considered non-standard in providing services for employment, such as the social services, intervened to increase job opportunities for those who lost their job due to the current pandemic. In addition to being a resourceful institution for those who seek social support, the Directorate of Social Services in the Municipality of Florence in Central Italy initiated a collaboration with local firms to reskill occupationally inactive individuals. Those who registered to participate in their training programmes were mostly Italian males over 30 years old, with an employment history characterised by precariousness. While training proved to be successful in providing employment to specific categories, including the lower educated, most of the participants did not find a job in their original sector of specialisation. In addition, when they were offered a job, a contract was mostly offered for a definite period of 3–6 months. This suggest there are some limitations to the new role acquired by the social services that policy makers should account for.

First, from the data it can be deduced that individuals who reached out to the Directorate of Social Services are subjects who are likely to seek for social support also in non-pandemic times. They work in low-skilled jobs and come from atypical employment most of the time. Thus, providing them with a training programme that can guarantee them additional work experience and some form of occupational activity is better than not providing them with such a training in the first place. At the same time, however, social class matters in a context of on-the-job training effectiveness (Ludwig-Mayerhofer et al., 2014). This could suggest exclusivity of efficacy of programmes initiated by the social services for individuals who are in a disadvantaged position ex ante. On this subject, further research should investigate whether similar results can be obtained for segments of the population normally not dependant on social support.

Second, the fact that certain categories of workers, who are already economically and socially vulnerable, tend to opt for institutions of social services is just another indicator of how social, in addition to occupational, support is relevant for them. When analysing the behaviour of unemployed individuals, Stutzer and Lalive (2004) found that social work norms significantly impact individuals’ wellbeing. Building on Fargion’s (2018) argument that synergistic work by different actors could promote a type of social work active in policy-making, the data collected by the Tuscan Directorate of Social Services in Italy suggest that social workers alone are not capable of guaranteeing occupational sustainability. Even successful cases of reinstatement into the labour market are limited to short and fixed-term contracts.

In a seminal paper, Thompson (2002) argued that social work could benefit from social regulation, development, and emancipation. We believe that stronger support is needed on behalf of other parties, including job centres and educational institutes, to achieve a type of accompaniment to work that is by definition complete. On the one hand, social workers might find it hard ‘to balance providing care and implementing policy’ (Ylvisaker & Rugkåsa, 2021, p. 1). On the other hand, social services are not necessarily equipped for assisting occupationally inactive individuals at levels other than the social one. Making employment assistance and social support compatible is not always possible (Perkins, 2010).

‘Social work could and should make use of the corona crisis to plea for a social welfare system that breaks boundaries’ (Devlieghere & Roose, 2021, p. 563), but only insofar it is provided with right instruments, or rather the right partners. The initiative carried out by the Italian Directorate of Social Services under investigation should be praised for the novel role it took on in an expected moment of health, social, and economic crisis and the positive reinforcement it brought to occupation for the vulnerable segment of the population. Policy makers, however, should better understand what standard labour market institutions are lacking and in case it is social support to prospective workers, then they must proactively intervene to make it a regulated and financially sound reality.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Chiara Natalie Focacci

Chiara Natalie Focacci Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center of Empirical Legal Studies, School of Law, Erasmus University Rotterdam and Research Affiliate at the Center for Law & Economics, ETH Zurich. PhD thesis in Economics, University of Bologna, focused on active labour market policies & MSc degree in Economic History from the University of Oxford. Team member of the project “Beyond the Technological Revolution” led by Carlota Perez. Interested in issues related to labour law and economics and economic history.

Notes

1 https://www.ilsole24ore.com/art/coronavirus-gia-chiuse-primo-trimestre-9mila-aziende-piu-2019-ADmwYGM.

2 The proportion is higher when we only examine eligibles (49\%).

3 http://dati.istat.it/Index.aspx?QueryId=20730.

4 https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/seven-charts-that-show-covid-19s-impact-on-womens-employment.

5 https://www.unwomen.org/en/news/stories/2020/9/feature-covid-19-economic-impacts-on-women.