Italy July jobless rate falls to 6.0%, with 13,000 jobs created

ROME (Reuters) -Italy's unemployment rate fell to 6.0% in July from a downwardly revised 6.2% in June, national statistics bureau ISTAT reported on Monday, as a net 13,000 jobs were created during the month.

A Reuters survey of analysts had forecast a July jobless rate of 6.3%, which was the previously reported figure for June.

The youth unemployment rate, measuring job-seekers between 15 and 24 years old, decreased to 18.7% from 20.1%.

In the period between May and July, employment in the euro zone's third-largest economy was up by 51,000, or 0.2%, compared with the previous three months, ISTAT said.

In July, there were 218,000 more people in work than in the same month last year, an increase equal to 0.9%.

Italy's long-running increase in employment has come against a backdrop of weak economic growth and stagnant wages.

Italian gross domestic product shrank by 0.1% in the second quarter from the previous three months, ISTAT reported last week.

The economy grew by just 0.7% in each of the last two years, and the government forecasts 0.6% growth this year.

In July, the employment rate, one of the lowest in the euro zone, edged up to 62.8% from 62.7%, but the so-called "inactivity rate", measuring those neither working nor looking for work, rose to 33.2% from a previous 33.0%.

(Reporting By Gavin Jones, graphic by Stefano Bernabei)