Wednesday, October 24, 2012

Italian Labour Minister: "Young people cannot be choosy when looking for a job"

Italian Labour Minister Elsa Fornero is under fire these days, after she said that young people cannot be too “choosy” (yes, she actually used the English word, nobody really knows why) if they wish to enter the labour market.

Labour Minister Elsa Fornero

Speaking during a conference held by the industrial association “Assolombarda”, Fornero said that you need to take the first job you get offered, and then look for a better one from the inside.
She then replied to criticisms by stating that she had never said that young Italians today are choosy, since they are even willing to accept any temporary job (a phenomenon known in Italian as “precariato”).
I will not comment on her remarks and let you decide whether she should have kept her mouth shut or whether she was right. Here is the video with the English transcript.


Minister Fornero: “This is one of the parameters for the dynamism of the labour market: young people graduate and they must find a job. They cannot be too “choosy”, to use the English term. I used to tell my students: accept the first offer, then from the inside you can start to look around. But you have to enter the market immediately, you cannot think that there will always be a better offer later. Today it is not like this anymore, with such a difficult and weak market, but we all have seen some graduates holding back for the “perfect job”.  That is not how it works. In the market you need to be active, you need to enter it and then maybe you can do better”

Journalist: “Minister Fornero, are young Italians too choosy when looking for a job?”

Fornero: “No, I have never said that. Young Italians today are willing to accept any job, indeed today many of them are on a temporary job. I said that in the past it could happen, when the labour market allowed different attitudes. Today young people in Italy are not in the condition to be choosy.”

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