Measuring Unemployment by Means of Official Data and Administrative Records: Empirical and Theoretical Perspectives

This paper addresses the measurement of unemployment in the Italian regional context. Specifically, retrieving data from Tuscany, we compare the picture of unemployment that emerges by exploring official data and administrative records over the period after the burst of the Great Recession. Consistently with previous findings, we find that registered unemployment is higher, more persistent and more concentrated on women than its official measure. However, despite those heterogeneities, we show that the cyclical behaviour of registered job seekers is similar to the one of official job seekers. Moreover, we provide a way to reconcile the two measures of unemployment. Thereafter, we develop a model that provides a rationale for the coexistence of official and registered job seekers and we explore how it reacts to productivity shocks and its policy implications. Finally, we offer some insights about the desirability of an integrated use of these data.