The paper describes the features and explores the possible drivers of the "employment-rich" recovery that occurred in Italy, where the employment headcount in 2017 almost reached the pre-crisis level despite real GDP being almost 5 percentage points below the level recorded in 2008.
The paper documents an heightened responsiveness of employment to real GDP since the end of 2014, mostly driven by the permanent component of payroll employment in 2015-2016 and by the temporary component in 2017. Among the possible determinants, it emerges the relevance of recent labour market reforms.
