Τhe Center for the Development of Educational Policy of the General Confederation of Workers of Greece (KANEP-GSEE) published a study in Thessaloniki recently in which it shows that unemployment among young Greek university graduates remains very high, after nearly a decade of economic stagnation.
More specifically, the study found that only seven out of ten Greek citizens under the age of 34, with at least a bachelor’s degree from a university, is currently employed.
The study found that fully 31.4 percent of Greek university graduates are not employed at all.
Additionally, the study revealed that three out of ten of those graduates who do have a job, are performing professional duties which require fewer skills than they possess.
According to what was published during the presentation of the study at Thessaloniki’s Telogleio Institute of Research, Greece came in last of all the nations of the EU in terms of university graduates’ employability in 2018.
The nation of Italy was second from the bottom and Slovakia third in terms of employability.
The study also revealed the devastating results of the financial crisis inflicted on the incomes of Greek citizens.
According to the available data, people who had a lower level of education lost fully 36.6 percent of their wages in the nine years between 2009 and 2018.
Exactly the same percent was also lost by those considered to have a medium-level education, and people with university or higher education levels actually lost even more, equivalent to 37.3 percent of their pre-crisis incomes.
The KANEP-GSEE study also revealed that during the years of the crisis, Greece endured an enormous blow both by the phenomena called ”brain drain” and ”brain waste.”
The former refers to the members of the highly-qualified Greek workforce who left the country to find better-paying jobs. The latter term, which is a bit harder to quantify, refers to the fact that well-educated people were obliged to accept jobs that require much fewer skills than what they actually have.
Taking all these factors into consideration, one can appreciate how difficult Greece’s path to recovery currently is, especially when the broader international economic environment is showing some signs of fragility.
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