Italy's unemployment rate reached 8.9 percent in December 2011, a record-high level since 2004, the national statistics agency Istat said on Tuesday.

According to the Istat, 2.24 million Italians did not have a job at the end of last year. The problem was most severe for youngsters, with 31 percent of those aged 15 to 24 being jobless.

Earlier this week, European Commission President Jose Manuel Barroso said he wanted to prepare special "action teams" headed by the European Union (EU) and local authorities to address high unemployment in Italy and other countries.

According to Giorgio Arfaras, an economist at Turin-based Luigi Einaudi research center, the high unemployment rate was mainly due to "the quite weak Italian productive structure in the ongoing crisis storm."

"Italy is characterized by a very limited number of big-size companies, a high but insufficient number of medium-size enterprises and extremely widespread micro-size enterprises," Arfaras told Xinhua.

"In such a difficult economic situation, small companies are the first to cut costs and employees," he pointed out.