Italian average is over

Michele Fontefrancesco, an economic anthropologist and honorary fellow of Durham University, says: “Jobs have been getting more precarious in Italy since the late-1990s. What is becoming more and more common in Italy and other Mediterranean countries is the erratic movement of workers from firm to firm.”

He adds: “It’s becoming harder and harder to access professions with social capital. You study for three or four years longer than your father and you earn less money than him.”

For Agnese Bellieni, a 31-year-old resident of Alessandria, in Italy’s north-west, years of education are failing to pay off, and the eurozone recovery feels intangible. After finishing her doctoral studies in literature her dream was to become a full-time teacher, but in recent years she has been bogged down in a series of continuous but part-time, precarious work assignments — from market research, to Latin and ancient Greek tutoring — that, at best, have earned her €1,500 a month.

That is by Claire Jones in the FT, mostly about how the new eurozone jobs have lower wages and less job security.

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