The Italian labour force numbers 23,781,341, of which women are the majority (51.9%). There are 21,514,000 people employed, 63% in services, 32% in industry and 5% in agriculture. Women make up a quarter of those employed in industry, a third in agriculture and a little less than half in services.

There are 227,249 domestic workers in Italy, of which half are non-EU workers (four fifths of them women). Apart from the Filipinos who make up one in three domestic workers, the largest groups are Peruvians (11,847) and Sri Lankans (9,791). These are followed by Romania, Poland and Albania each with 3-4,000, and then Brazil, Nigeria, Mauritius and El Salvador, each with 1,000 people.

  The International Convention on the Protection of the Rights of All Migrant Workers and Members of their Families (New York, 18 December 1990) entered into force on 1 July 2003. Today, there are 25 ratifications. The latest one was deposited on 30 January 2004 by Timor Leste.

 The number of immigrants arriving in Israel in 2003 is the lowest recorded since 1990, according to data published Sunday by the Central Bureau of Statistics. During the course of 2003, some 23,200 immigrants arrived in the country, 10,000 less than last year, reflecting a 31 percent decrease.

  The wave of immigration hit Israel during the course of 1990, when some 200,000 people arrived in the country. In 1991 there were 176,000 immigrants who arrived in Israel. Throughout the 1980's there were between 9,000 and 20,000 new immigrants yearly.

      Some 54 percent of the immigrants in 2003 - or some 12,600 people - came from European countries. Some 12 percent came from Asia, mostly from former Soviet-bloc nations. 3,300 immigrants.Some came from Africa, in comparison with 2,900 immigrants in 2 002.

  The number of Argentinean immigrants dropped considerably, from a figure of 6,000 in 2002 to just 400 in 2003. Eighteen hundred immigrants arrived during the course of the year from France and 1,700 from the United States.

According to the new figures, obtained by Copley News Service, the illegal immigrant population today would be 8 million rather than the 6.5 million the old calculations yielded.