International Organization for Migration (IOM)

Improving Access to Labour market Information for migrants and employers
102
Employment Offices – while in the middle one can find the standard job posting,
private agents (such as the Catholic Church, trade unions, NGOs) and temporary
workers agencies.” (Censis, 2010: 123). In this section, we look at the existing
evidence from different data sources available in Italy.
Evidence from the labour force survey
The Labour Force Survey (LFS) represents a unique source of information about job
search strategies of workers in the Italian labour market. 43 First, from the answers of
unemployed individuals, we can learn about the main channels used by interviewees
when looking for a job. Second, when employed workers are asked about the way
they found their current job, we can get an idea of which of those strategies is more
effective in leading to a positive outcome in the job search process. Moreover, the
LFS collects detailed information about the citizenship of the respondents, allowing
us to analyse differences in behaviour and in outcomes between Italian citizens and
immigrants. 44 We will distinguish workers in four groups: Italian citizens, foreign
citizens of EU15 Member States (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Finland, France,
Germany, Greece, Ireland, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden,
United Kingdom), foreign citizens of New Member States (NMS) in the EU27
(Bulgaria, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Estonia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Malta,
Poland, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia) and citizens of countries not in the EU27. We
use LFS data for the year 2010. This is the most recent year for which the micro data
were made available for our analysis.
Role of public employment offices
A first question allows us to assess the role played by the Public Employment Offices
in favouring the match between workers and employers in the Italian labour market.
Indeed, all workers (employed and unemployed) are asked whether they ever had
contact with a Public Employment Office. The first row of Table 7.5 shows that about
40 per cent of Italian workers have had some contact over the course of their working
life, while the share among all foreign workers is about half of that figure (around
22%). If we disaggregate these shares by gender (first row, 7.6), we find that women,
both Italians and immigrants, are about 4–11 percentage points more likely to have
used a Public Employment Office than men of their same citizenship group. Still, the
43 The Italian Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a continuous survey carried out during every week of a
year by ISTAT, the Italian National Institute of Statistics (www.istat.it). Each quarter, the LFS
collects information on almost 70,000 households in 1,246 Italian municipalities for a total of 175,000
individuals (representing 1.2 per cent of the overall Italian population). The reference population of
the LFS consists of all household members officially resident in Italy, even if temporarily abroad.
Households registered as resident in Italy who habitually live abroad and permanent members of
collective facilities (hospices, children’s homes, religious institutions, barracks, etc.) are excluded. The
LFS provides quarterly estimates of the main aggregates of labour market (employment status, type
of work, work experience, job search, etc.), disaggregated by gender, age and territory (up to regional
detail).
44 In the analysis in this section, we will adopt a definition of immigrant based on citizenship, that s,
we will define as immigrants all those individuals who are not Italian citizens. Some of the Italian
citizens, therefore, will be immigrants who have managed to naturalize.