The impact of the "long wave" of the crisis. A policy for employment in Italy

In a labour market in which unemployment is spreading and becoming increasingly difficult to absorb in the short term, in which temporary work and social hardship are growing in importance, it is necessary to rediscover what in the past were called employment policies, whose very complexity make it necessary to confront a series of questions that the crisis has brought to the fore. Problems within the labour market, such as the fragmentation of jobs and job paths, but also related to saving and upgrading the country’s productive system. Problems: of coordinating macroeconomic policies, which cannot be limited to income support measures; of rethinking the rules in order, among other objectives, to redesign the relationships between finance and industry; of identifying the institutions that should be their guarantors. Problems, lastly, of creating the conditions for reviving the dialogue between the social and economic dimensions.