Only days after Greek Prime Minister Antonis Samaras said that for the first time since austerity measures were imposed three years ago that more people were being hired than fired, the country’s statistics agency ELSTAT said unemployment hit another record of 27.2 percent in January.
There are now more than 1.3 million people out of work, not including another 500,000 or more for whom annual unemployment benefits that last a year have run out. All the jobless are in the private sector as the government has so far refused to lay off any public workers despite criticism from the Troika of the European Union-International Monetary Fund-European Central Bank (EU-IMF-ECB) said it wants 150,000 of them let go over the next three years.
The current rate is the highest since ELSTAT began publishing jobless data in 2006 and further proof that austerity is crushing hopes of restoring jobs. The rate was more than twice the Eurozone’s average unemployment reading of 12 percent.
Earlier this month, Angelos Tsakanikas, Head of Research for the Foundation for Economic and Industrial Research (IOBE) said that jobless rate is crippling the government’s efforts to also restore confidence, especially with more than 67 percent of those under 25 out of work.
He said if it continues that social unrest could undermine the uneasy coalition government that Samaras, the New Democracy Conservative leader, heads with the PASOK Socialists and tiny Democratic Left (DIMAR) as partners.
Tsakanikas said that the longer people are out of work, especially the young that the harder it is for them to find employment. “Older members of the unemployed workforce are not prepared to take jobs with low pay, while joblessness is also high among those with higher education,” he said.
The Labor Ministry has launched an orientation and employment scheme for jobless people aged 18 to 29, which includes 80 hours of orientation classes and five months of training that could lead to a subsidized position. The scheme foresees jobs for a total of 35,000 applicants.
Applications can be submitted from April 15 to May 22.
More than 120,000 professionals, including doctors, engineers, IT professionals and scientists, have left Greece since the start of the country’s financial crisis in 2010, according to a recent study by the University of Thessaloniki.
“The number of young scientists who emigrate has reached 10 percent of the country’s potential, and that’s very high,” the study’s director Lois Lambrianides told the Athens newspaper Ethnos.
Lambrianides, professor of economic geography at the University of Thessaloniki, said that the emigrating professionals tend to leave for other European countries, settle in big cities and end up working in the private sector. He said half of them have multiple degrees from the world’s top 100 universities that are useless in Greece, which refuses to recognize private colleges in violation of European Union law.
Only Greeks who attend state schools, that are rated among the worst in the world and accept applicants with scores as low as 4 out of 100 are eligible for work by the government.
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