Italy's harmonized index of consumer prices increased by 1.5% annually in May and decreased by 0.2% month on month, provisional estimates by the National Institute of Statistics showed May 31.

The annual rate of increase in the previous month was 2%.

Core inflation was up 0.8% in May, compared with 1.2% in April.

Meanwhile, another set of provisional data released by the institute showed that in April, 22.9 million people were employed in Italy, 0.4% more than the figure in March, while unemployment fell 3.5% monthly to 2.9 million. The April unemployment rate was 11.1%, 0.4 percentage points down from the month before.