STUDY Youth Unemployment in Italy at the Time of the New Great Depression FRANCESCO PASTORE November 2012  Italy is a typical example of the Southern European school-to-work transition regimes in which the education system is rigid and sequential, the labour market has become increasingly flexible through two-tier reforms and the family plays an important role in bearing the costs of transition to adulthood. The youth labour market question has many obscure facets, that have been exacerbated by the recent economic crisis.  Italy has one of the toughest school-to-work transitions, with dramatic absolute and relative disadvantages in the labour market. The evolution of labour market reforms suggests that this may be due principally to the fact that the education system is unable to close the youth experience gap, rather than to an alleged rigidity of the labour market.  Instead of implementing the dual training model used in Germany to help young people develop the problem-solving skills and competencies required by the labour market, the task of filling the youth experience gap has been left to the market itself. This has resulted in inadequate solutions such as temporary employment and the like. The 2011 reform of the apprenticeship system is a step in the right direction, but it has encountered difficulties in getting under way.