Jun 19, 2007, 11:15 GMT
Rome - Italy's unemployment rate fell to a near 15-year low of 6.4 per cent in the first three months of 2007, Italian statistics institute Istat said Tuesday.
This compares with an unadjusted rate of 6.9 per cent in the previous quarter and with a 7.6 per cent rate registered in the same quarter of 2006.
The first quarter seasonally-adjusted rate was estimated at 6.2 per cent, the lowest such figure since the fourth quarter of 1992.
The number of jobless in Europe's fourth-largest economy has been falling steadily since the approval in 2003 of labour reforms introducing more flexibility to the market.
Despite the drop, unemployment remains persistently high in the country's poorer southern regions, with Istat data published Tuesday estimating the rate at 11.4 per cent, exactly three times the 3.8 per cent rate registered in Italy's affluent north.
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