The Jobs Act is the shorthand name for the Italian labour reform enacted through Legge 183/2014 and a series of implementing legislative decrees issued in 2015. Its central provision, contained in D.Lgs. 23/2015, introduced the contratto a tutele crescenti (contract with incrementally increasing protections): employees hired on permanent contracts after 7 March 2015 receive dismissal remedies that grow with seniority rather than the broad reinstatement rights previously available under Article 18 of the Workers' Statute (Statuto dei Lavoratori).
The reform also rationalised the landscape of atypical contracts, abolishing or restricting several forms including the contratto a progetto (project-based contract), and established a new, more generous unemployment benefit -- NASpI -- in place of the fragmented pre-existing schemes. Additionally, it introduced semplificazioni (simplifications) to the procedures for collective redundancies and transfers of undertakings.
The constitutional legitimacy of the indemnity caps introduced by the Jobs Act was partially contested. In 2018 the Italian Constitutional Court (Corte Costituzionale) struck down the rigid automatic indemnity formula, giving judges greater discretion to award compensation in proportion to circumstances. As a result, dismissal risk in Italy remains a significant factor in workforce planning for employers across all sectors.