The onslaught of a new negative trend in still bailout-dependent Greece, what's dubbed as the "working poor", is the focus of a latest Der Spiegel article, namely, young adults with a tertiary education and qualifications but with income that only barely covers their monthly grocery bill.
The mass-circulation German magazine cites three examples of young Greeks struggling to make ends meet in a country shuffling through its third memorandum program - the third imposed by a "strange bedfellows" leftist-rightist coalition government elected on a populist andvirulently anti-bailout, anti-austerity platform.
One 24-year-old woman with college-level studies in languages and literature works as a barmaid, while a 27-year-old English language graduate works 25 hours a week but only gets paid 15. Another man, 30, with a degree in physical education, covers his bills on the meager pay of a fast food job, the magazine reports.
"A liberalization of the labor market brought about the exact opposite of what was intended ... lawmakers reduced the minimum (monthly) salary to 586 euros, and at the same time allowed employers to go even further down when the job-seeker is under the age of 25. The intent of the measure was a hope that it would combat youth unemployment, which in 2016 reached 47 percent. At the same time, a new generation of wage-earners emerged, who are willing to do almost anything, knowing that if they didn't, others would," Der Spiegel reports.
