In recent years the increase in the number of persons employed, despite the stagnation of economic activity, has been driven by the greater flexibility of the labour market and the moderation of real wage growth.
Nevertheless, in the first half of the year unit labour costs in the service sector grew more than two percentage points faster on an annual basis than the average for the main euro-area countries. In industry excluding construction the gap exceeded four points. The main factor was labour productivity, which evolved less favourably in Italy than in the other countries.