Abstract

This article examines the trend of short and very short-term labour demand over the last decade in Italy. The analysis is conducted with the use of administrative data from the Statistical Information System of Compulsory Communications (SISCO). The results show that five years after the end of the economic and financial crisis and in the midst of the Covid-19 crisis, the labour market seems to have profoundly changed. Today, labour demands appear to be much more discontinuous over time than in the past, with periods of employment, most often less than one year, alternating with periods of inactivity or unemployment. The Covid-19 pandemic is impacting the demand for discontinuous work: job losses in the emergency period mainly concerned fixed-term work. The National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) is a unique opportunity to restructure Italy’s labour market and to fund the currently inadequate active policies.