La dinamica intergenerazionale nei mercati del lavoro: tra conflitto, mutua esclusione e misure per l’inclusività

The need for maintaining older individuals active within the labour market by delaying their retirement, and the difficulties met by the younger generations in entering the labour market, represent areas of transition seen as possible sources of intergenerational conflicts. The hypothesis of conflict between older and younger generations in employment is not clearly demonstrated and the political debate on this issue presents several ambiguities In Italy, these ambiguities, which arise from the implicit logic that rule the labour market functioning, are confirmed both from the structural perspective, for what concerns the composition of the available workforce, and from the demographic one. The analysis of the historical series of labour force participation (activity rate) shows that the factor that mostly influences youth unemployment is the level of inclusiveness of the labour markets themselves, thus means their capacity of offering employment opportunities for all the individuals, at every age, available over time. Under this perspective, an inclusive labour market reduces the risk of unemployment for the younger people not excluding the older ones. Taking into account the demographic transition that is challenging most of the European countries in terms of economic and social sustainability, the intergenerational dynamic (not conflicting) arising within the labour market could represent the right perspective to look at an increased inclusiveness of labour market as a source of social cohesion. Therefore, from this perspective, social cohesion is interpreted as possible outcome of an incresed labour market inclusiveness. Starting from these premises, the paper aims at exploring the link between social inclusion – through labour market participation of people of all ages and forms of intergenerational solidarity which originate within the labour market – and social cohesion. It discusses the generational inequalities emerging from the different forms of labour market participation in Italy by focusing especially on the hypothesis of a mutually excluding association between older (55-64 years old) and younger (15-24 years old) individuals in employment. The methods for the analysis are statistical correlation and linear regression models and the source of data is the the Labour Force Survey by Eurostat.