By now it is conventional wisdom that the Italian economy is foundering alongside all other peripheral European nations as a result of a failed artificial currency leading to an inability for external rebalancing, a flawed monetary system leading to a collapse in credit demand, and the lack of any structural reform (and sorry, but when your budget deficit is soaring alongside your debt it's anything but "austerity's fault"). However, there is hope. According to Italy's trade union CGIL, good news may be just around the corner as Italy looks set to recover its pre-crisis unemployment level... In 2076, or a brief 63 years from now. "So, you're telling me there's a chance."
From Quotidiano:
It will take 63 years to recover employment levels of 2007. Only in 2076 will Italy return to the 25,026,400 units of labor standards in 2007 from 23,531,949 in 2014. This is stated in the office economic study of CGIL, which takes as its starting point the current context.
Some other metrics may not need to wait three generations until they "recover", among which GDP, which should return to pre-crisis levels in 2026, investment - by 2024, and productivity should be back in a brisk three years.
So much for the good news.
Now the bad news: "the level of real wages will never recover."
We are not sure if this was the base case, or the optimistic one. In either case, at least Italy has the Euro, and all that No Plan B "political capital" backing it.