The latest detailed figures issued by Greece's independent statistical bureau (El.Stat) show that 9.2 million people in the country are over the age of 15, of which 4.43 million are not employed and considered as the "non-active" portion of population.
By T. Tsiros
[email protected]
The latest detailed figures issued by Greece's independent statistical bureau (El.Stat) show that 9.2 million people in the country are over the age of 15, of which 4.43 million are not employed and considered as the "non-active" portion of population.
Conversely, 4.772 million people (out of a population of roughly 11 million) are considered as the active portion of the workforce, with 3.648 million employed and the rest (1.124 million) considered unemployed.
Of the employed figure, 375,000 are part-time wage-earners, with their declared monthly income hovering at between 300 to 400 euros. Tellingly, that leaves 3.27 million people as the country's workforce, the biggest bloc from which the state expects to generate the lion's share of taxes and social security contributions.
El.Stat did not include figures from other surveys on the percentage of people employed in the "underground" or "grey economy", essentially people working off-the-books.
In essence, each fully employed person in Greece contributes for another three people in the country who are not part of the active workforce or unemployed, whether that refers to minors under the age of 15 or to people considered as being in a state of long-term joblessness.
In a further breakdown of the El.Stat figures, some 60 percent of the population above the age of 15 is not employed, with their living expenditures covered by social security, state-allocated stipends (such as disability or indigent payments) or even through the still very robust familial support networks that characterize Greek society.
However, if a trend showing repeated salary and wage cuts is added to the "calculus" then the situation turns dire in terms of the ratio of working people to the non-working population.
The marginal increase in employment, in Q4 2016 compared to the same quarter in 2015, is mostly based on part-time employment, which as a percentage of the overall labor sector now reaches 10 percent and is constantly increasing.