Hi all I am thinking of buying a static caravan for myself & my 3 kids who have all left school, primary as a holiday home at 1st with the longer view of staying all the time & was wondering outwith other legalities such as tax & medical insurance that comes with emergrating, my main question is how easy is it for a fit male in his late 40s gain some type of job (I dont have a trade but willing to work in any job) to get in the country?
Thanks for any opinions
Kenny

The main thing you need for a job here is to be able to speak Italian. If you have this and are from the EU, apart from the necessary paperwork, you would find it as easy or difficult as it is in the UK. Remember the pay is substantially less than the UK with the cost of living in the main being very similar.

I would not live in a caravan or camper van in Italy in the summer. You would need the air conditioning turned up very high. If you are looking for cheap housing, the villages have properties in reasonable state of repair to move into buy/rent. Unemployment is high in the area, if you have carpentry skills, electrician qualifications or you can get them at night school do it! Alot of building work along the sea fronts, long hours in the sun though. they take August off as it is too hot to work! If you want to move permamently you cannot get residency in the new tourist complexes, you need to buy on the local housing market. One of the reasons the tourist complex are cheaper the land is cheaper as permament residence is not allow on them the local council do not keep up the infrastructure either, roads, drains etc.

Easiest place to start looking for jobs would be the language schools. Most of them often seem to be on the look out for mother tongue teachers but you might not have work for the full twelve months which might mean no pay in July and August

Difficult!

My boyfriend and I came here two years ago in our late twenties. I continued to work for my British clients, while he took your attitude "will take any job".

It took him longer than he expected to get good Italian - he still doesn't write it well enough for an office job - and a lot of job agencies didn't want to know as soon as they heard him speak. This made him lose confidence; it was hard to convince him to even apply for a job after that.

I soon discovered that he didn't actually mean "any job" - when we saw what little was available in the paper he started ruling out sales jobs, school leavers jobs, unpleasant sounding jobs... etc. He discovered that employers want people under 24 or who had been unemployed for 2 years plus because of tax incentives.

Even the English teaching schools want people with full TEFL qualifications - and your first year or so in English teaching can be truly unpleasant - low paid state school work.

What finally worked for him was making friends here, who looked out for him. But even now, for backbreaking work as an apprentice electrician (he's a biologist by the way!), he takes home about €600 after tax. Yes, that's per month. In a winter month we pay over €130 on gas alone.

Bear in mind:
- unemployment is high - particularly in the greener areas where you'll probably want to live. Who are they going to choose - the 17 year old Italian who's the son of a friend, or a 40 year old foreigner?
- most Italian businesses consist of two or three people from one family. It's a huge risk to them taking on new staff (the law makes it very hard to fire people here).
- utility and food prices keep rising, and there's no sign of an end to it.
- while English is a plus, they also tend to ask for other things that you're not going to have - like a school-leaver's certificate from a ragioneria (book-keeping) school for example (Italian higher schools are specialised).

Sorry to be negative, but come prepared! Next time you're here, pick up a local paper and read the jobs page. Think realistically about how many you could do, then divide that number by four to find out how many won't go to relatives.

If you're entrepreneurial, start your own business - you've got experience to offer that others don't (but bear in mind that self-employed folk can be taxed up to 60%!). Some fields you could try (though they probably aren't well-paid) might be translation (if your Italian is great), teaching English, painting houses etc. (especially for English folks), acting as an intermediary for people with holiday homes (again needing good Italian), estate agency.

Fields you might have thought of but that won't be easy: exporting wine (unless you've got the experience, contacts and means already), tour guiding (takes years and money to qualify, which you have to do), barista (needs fantastic Italian).

Good luck!