85,000 people apply for THIRTY jobs at a bank as Italy faces unemployment crisis

Bank of Italy advertised 30 deputy assistant roles at a junior wage of €28,000
The state bank was inundated with applicants, receiving nearly 3,000 per post
A shortlist of 8,000 has been drawn up - all academics with first-class degrees
Lack of work in Italy means nearly 40 per cent of youngsters are unemployed

Italy's unemployment crisis has been put under the spotlight once again as 85,000 people applied for just 30 jobs at a bank.

Bank of Italy in Rome advertised thirty deputy assistant roles at a junior wage of €28,000 (£24,800) and received nearly 3,000 candidates for each post.

The crippling lack of work in the country means nearly 40 per cent of youngsters don't have a job and the overall figure is at 11 per cent.

Unemployment in the eurozone remained at the same level in May with the Eurostat statistics agency said the jobless rate across the 19 nations stayed at 9.3 percent.

Europe-wide, the unemployment rate is at its lowest level since March 2009, though the rate was up in trouble spots Italy and France.

Italy, with its economy shaken by recent banking failures, saw unemployment up from 11.2 percent to 11.3 percent.

It has left Italians scrambling for jobs they might not ordinarily feel obliged to apply for, including the roles at the state bank.

A man with a wad of €500 notes in his hand. One of the duties of the deputy assistants would be to feed cash into machines that separate genuine and counterfeit notes

One of the duties of the deputy assistants would be to feed cash into machines that separate genuine and counterfeit notes, according to The Telegraph.

The 85,000 applicants were eventually whittled down to a 8,000 shortlist.

All of those vying for the junior positions are academic first-class graduates, according to the paper.

They will now enter a rigorous recruitment process where they will be forced to sit an exam on statistics, mathematics, economics and English and will be subject to a second oral exam.

The thirty successful applicants, which make up just 0.35 percent of those who originally went for the jobs, will take up full-time employment next year - a sought-after position in Italy.

Labour laws in Italy make it difficult for employers to get rid of incompetent workers, meaning people are constantly chasing jobs in the public sector that come with benefits and pensions.

It has resulted in thousands of people at a time applying for relatively mundane jobs.

In 2015, 32,000 applied for 94 admin roles in Umbria.