Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi can point to an impressive fall in unemployment as he campaigns for Italy's April 9 general election, but a look behind the numbers shows the situation is not as rosy as it might seem.
Italy, unlike France and Germany, has continued to create jobs - some 997,000 since Mr Berlusconi took office in 2001 - even though the economy has expanded at a measly average annual rate of just 0.8 per cent.
Despite a stagnant economy, unemployment has fallen steadily from 9.2 per cent to a record low of 7.7 per cent in the third quarter of 2005, according to the most recent data available.
Mr Berlusconi has received little public credit for his jobs record and opinion polls show unemployment remains top of voters' concerns.
This may be because in recent years, despite appearances, the labour situation for Italians has actually got worse.
According to official statistics bureau ISTAT, the fall in unemployment in the last two years has been largely because job-seekers in the poor south have become so discouraged they have given up looking for work altogether.
After nine years of decline, the number of Italians neither in work nor looking for work began steadily rising at the start of 2004.
Francesca Alagna, 31, from Palermo in Sicily, has been looking for work for nearly two years since a slump in business forced her to wind up the clothes shop she ran with her husband, who is also unemployed.
"Things are getting worse and worse here, everyone is either unemployed or on three-month contracts, usually in a call-centre, I don't believe for one minute that unemployment is falling," she says.
"We have been looking everywhere for work, but in Sicily you can't get anything unless you know someone and now the economy is so bad that even knowing someone doesn't help," she added.
Meanwhile, Francesca's cousin, Alessandro Pavone, who is 27, has never had a regular job since he left school at 18.
Italy's activity rate - the sum of those in work and those looking for work as a proportion of the working-age population - fell sharply in the third quarter of 2005 to its lowest level since 2000.
The employment rate - the percentage of working age people with a job - also fell, to 57.4 per cent, 0.3 points down from the year earlier period.
Italy has the lowest employment rate in the euro zone, far below Germany's 65 per cent and 63 per cent for France and for the 12-nation bloc as a whole.
It has far less people in work than its neighbours despite having a lower unemployment rate.
So where has all the jobs growth come from?
According to ISTAT, in recent years it has been almost entirely due to the regularisation of the position of immigrants who were already working anyway.
In 2002 the government combined a draconian new law cracking down on immigration with a one-off amnesty for illegal immigrant workers already in the country.
Some 650,000 foreign workers took advantage of the measure, which granted them Italian residency and turned a blind eye to how they entered the country so long as they came into the open and regularised their work position.
Another factor increasing employment figures in recent years has been from people retiring later due to a series of pension reforms introduced since the early 1990s.
This is good for headline statistics on job growth but, like the regularisation of immigrants, it makes it no easier for jobless young Italians to find work.
While Italy's overall jobless rate fell in the third quarter of 2005, youth unemployment rose two percentage points from the year before to 23.6 per cent. Italy has the highest youth unemployment in the euro zone, where average joblessness among 15- to 24-year-olds is 17.6 per cent.
And making matters worse for Mr Berlusconi is the fact that in many cases even those who have found jobs are not happy. This is because they are invariably low-paid, temporary ones offering no guarantees for the future.
Labour reforms under the centre-left government in 1997 and Mr Berlusconi in 2003 have greatly increased the scope for temporary contracts - an opportunity which firms have leapt on.
According to a study published last month by left-wing think-tank, IRES, 87.3 per cent of working Italians under the age of 24 have short-term contracts, as well as 53.5 per cent in the 25-32-year age group.
Edvige Musacchi, a 42 year-old data processor from the north-eastern town of Ferrara, has usually been in work since she left school at the age of 19 but, like many of her peers, has never had a permanent job.
"It's not in firms' interests to give you a permanent contract," she said.
"They just renew the temporary one as often as they are allowed to and then let you go and get someone else. It's very frustrating because it means you have no rights and you can't plan your life."