Getting a Job

Once or twice a week, we get letters from people living abroad who want advice on finding a job in Italy -- some for the summer, and some for a year or more. Our advice is to think very hard, and then think again. Finding a job here is not easy, for a number of reasons:

The job market is very tight. The national unemployment rate is above 12%, but it's unevenly distributed: Young people and women are much harder hit, and in many parts of the South it's above 50%.
One needs papers to work in Italy. Italian citizens of course have them, as do citizens of the European Economic Community. However, if you come from outside the EEC, most of the jobs open to you are under-the-table. These jobs are generally menial, usually low paying, and often dirty or dangerous. There is usually no health or disability coverage, and if your employer decides to cheat you (a distinct possibility) you have no place to turn.
What will you do? The illegal and legal aliens do the work Italians are unwilling to do, for example scrubbing pots in restaurants or picking tomatoes under the burning sun. This is not the sort of thing most people who decide to work in Italy have in mind. There is, of course, teaching English or translating (assuming you know enough Italian), but it's not a good option: Supply far outweighs demand, and the schools and agencies can set the rates they want. When your WebWeaver taught English (part time) in for a few months 1993, he was paid about 5 dollars an hour. It's very difficult to survive in Italy on this sort of wage, especially if you have to pay rent.
In Italy any job worth while is discovered through the grapevine. Someone knows someone who presents you to someone else, and things go from there. Though some legitimate private employment agencies exist, the fact that the news services regularly warn people not to pay employment agencies until they have a job and a paycheck that doesn't bounce obviously means something. There are government-run Uffici di Collocamento (placement offices) but they're mostly for factory jobs that require papers and the appropriate bureaucratic qualifications (metalworker of the third rank…).

So, if you really want to work in Italy, you have three options:

Marry an Italian (a truly drastic step) or figure out how to claim dual citizenship. In either case you will get papers, which will allow you to join the legions of Italian job seekers.
Find a job with an foreign company that has an Italian branch and ask to be transferred to Italy. Not as romantic as flying off to look for work, but much safer.
If you have a skill that is in short supply here (some kinds of engineering or programming for example), get yourself hired by an Italian company.

La Spezia's shipyards recently hired squads of Croatian welders who know how to work specialty steels. A shipyard is a shipyard, but on their day off they can go to the Cinque Terre…

Best of luck!