Employment and Regional Development in Italy

This article presents a comparison of the evolution of employment rates by sector in Italy with the European Union averages. We analyse the main causes of the differences of the rates of non-agrarian employment, between northern and southern regions, as well as the inter-relation between the evolution of employment and the spatial distribution of population, by means of inter-regional econometric models, bearing in mind the inter-relation between industry and services and the role of other factors that explain the evolution of regional development. The period of analysis is 1960-2000 for national data and 1985-1995 for regional data.