Italian national statistics institute Istat said on Friday that 3.2 million citizens were unemployed in September, the highest level since 2004.
The number of the jobless was 48,000 higher in September than in August and 58,000 up on the same month in 2013, Istat said.
Thus the unemployment rate in the country climbed back up to a record level of 12.6 percent in September after already hitting the 12.6 percent mark several times this year.
Also in September, the jobless rate among people aged between 15 and 24 who are on the labor market was 42.9 percent, 0.8 percent down on August but 1.9 higher than in September 2013, Istat said.
The government of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi has put labor policies at the center of its program to restart growth in the Italian economy, which is in its third year of recession and has fallen over 9 percent from its 2008 level.
A reform proposed by the government and aimed at making the labor marked more flexible is going through parliamentary process for final approval.
According to Italy's largest labor union CGIL, however, the reform would significantly reduce job protections for new employees by changing a regulation that presently makes it difficult for companies with more than 15 employees to fire workers with open-ended contracts.
Around one million people, according to organizers, took to the street in Italy's capital Rome on Saturday to protest the labor reform./.