La Stampa, 27 November 2017<\/a><\/p>\nTaken together, these phenomena help to explain why some young people seek better job opportunities in other countries (the so-called \u2018brain drain\u2019) or, conversely, why others shy away from employment, education or training (the NEETs), placing themselves on the fringes of the labour market. Complicating the picture, however, is the fact that certain professional roles remain unfilled by young people, with businesses unable to find available, skilled labour to recruit, even when offering favourable financial terms. An imbalance between labour supply and demand is taking shape, making the labour market and its prospects a tangled web from which it is difficult to extricate oneself, where families, young people and businesses each have a point. All this creates a sense of confusion in the collective imagination. The study by Community Media Research addresses the issue of young people, work and their prospects, with the aim of analysing public attitudes on these matters. Overall, a picture emerges that is tinged with pessimism regarding the opportunities the younger generations may have in the future \u2013 a sentiment that is intensifying over time. 85.7 per cent of Italians expect that, compared to their parents, young people will occupy a worse social and economic position, a figure that has risen by more than 10 percentage points since 2015 (74.1 per cent). The proportion of those who believe that moving abroad is the best way to advance one\u2019s career remains stable and constitutes a large majority (68.5 per cent). Consequently, the population still sees no signs within the country of a reversal in the outlook for their children. Indeed, the general sentiment seems to be turning more negative rather than improving. But is the blame for such a scenario laid at the feet of the younger generations or the market? Does it stem from the fact that young people have become \u2018spoilt\u2019 and fussy (choosy), or from the behaviour of businesses? There is only one aspect on which respondents are almost unanimously in agreement: companies mostly offer young people precarious and poorly paid jobs (92.1 per cent). Beyond the objective data, there is a widespread and pervasive sentiment that the labour market must address: namely, the lack of investment it makes in the younger generations. That said, young people are also seen as bearing some of the responsibility, such as prioritising money over learning a trade (60.1 per cent) or turning down certain jobs (43.2 per cent), although a slight majority believe they are willing to make sacrifices for a job (54.0 per cent). To summarise, we can identify three main trends. A feeling of \u2018understanding\u2019 (56.7%) towards young people prevails among Italians: overall, the lack of prospects is attributed to market conditions rather than to the young people\u2019s own behaviour. Women, those who have recently settled into work (aged 25\u201334) and have therefore only just gone through this experience, graduates and the unemployed fall most within this group. However, there is no shortage of \u2018critics\u2019 (23.0%) who, by contrast, place the blame for these difficulties primarily on young people themselves. It is interesting to note that it is precisely the youngest respondents (aged up to 24) who are most likely to blame their peers, illustrating that this group cannot be summarised by a single definition. Between these two positions lie the \u2018bipartisan\u2019 group (20.3 per cent): this includes those who apportion responsibility equally between businesses and young people. It is worth noting that it is primarily entrepreneurs who hold this view, striking a balance between self-criticism and support for young people.<\/p>\n
Taken together, these factors make the issue of young people, work and future prospects a complex one, however you look at it. The collective mindset is gloomy, and we must guard against the potential polarisation between inclusion and exclusion from the labour markets. Offering prospects to the younger generations means charting a future for the country by setting in motion a number of initiatives: reviewing the teaching methods of the various education and training systems, because as they stand today they are not conducive to learning; building a system of educational and career guidance that supports people during transitions into the labour market and throughout their entire working lives; improving and promoting work-based learning schemes, which are useful for developing experiential learning; asking business and trade union organisations to take on an \u2018educational\u2019 role, helping their members to understand the changes in the new competitive landscape. Young people, work and future prospects: it would be useful if these were among the central themes of the discussions in the forthcoming election campaigns. But this is, of course, purely hypothetical.<\/p>\n
Daniele Marini<\/p>\n
Methodological note<\/em>
\nCommunity Media Research carried out the LaST (Laboratory on Society and the Territory) Survey, which took place nationwide from 9 to 16 October 2017 amongst a representative sample of the resident population in Italy aged over 18. The methodological aspects and data collection were managed by Questlab. The total number of respondents was 1,561 (out of 13,413 contacts). The data analysis was reweighted according to gender, region, age group, employment status and educational qualification. The margin of error is +\/-2.5%. The survey was conducted via a visual survey on the main social media platforms and using a random sample reached via CAWI and CATI systems. The full report is available at www.agcom.it and www.communitymediaresearch.it<\/em><\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Giovani, lavoro e prospettive future costituiscono, per l\u2019Italia in particolare, una sorta di \u201ctriangolo-delle-bermuda\u201d sociale. Un\u2019area misteriosa, avvolta dall\u2019incertezza, cui le famiglie e le giovani generazioni guardano con ansia, col…<\/p>","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":7741,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[155,9,72,99],"class_list":["post-5423","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-osservatori","tag-indagine-last-3","tag-futuro","tag-giovani","tag-lavoro-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5423","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5423"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5423\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12828,"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5423\/revisions\/12828"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5423"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5423"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.community.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5423"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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