Despite a relentlessly high youth unemployment rate of nearly 40%, Italy’s technology sector has not been able to fill tens of thousands of posts due to lack of skills.
About 76,000 professional posts in the industrial and service sectors went without hiring last year, mostly notably 42% of the software developers and analysts up for recruitment and 30% of the engineering places.
The national unemployment level is slowly inching down below the 12% mark, it is the fifth highest in the euro area, leaving 3 million people stranded without jobs.
People under 25 are struggling to find work, but while unemployment has been gradually falling over the year, it was 39% in February 2016.
Many point to the brain drain as partially responsible for the failure to recruit. The national statistics agency reports that 7% of those who earned a PhD between 2004 and 2006 left Italy and that figure rises to 14% for those who received a PhD between 2008 and 2010.
"Obviously, among those who leave Italy for work there are many highly-skilled and well-educated workers," the Chamber of Commerce spokesperson said.
Others recognise that education may not be providing the work skills that employers need.
"We need our schools and universities to offer more work placements to students, giving them the opportunity to develop the real-world skills that will make them more valuable to employers," the spokesperson added.
