If you moved to Italy from the UK in recent years, you almost certainly did so knowing that Italy had a higher unemployment rate than back home. It was one of those facts that sat quietly in the background of the expat experience, a reminder that the Italian economy, for all its beauty and quality of life, had historically struggled to match the labour market performance of northern Europe.
This week, that assumption officially became out of date. On Wednesday 4 March, Italy's national statistics bureau Istat published data showing that the country's unemployment rate fell to 5.1 percent in January 2026, the lowest level recorded since the current data series began in 2004.
