Galery

1

12.2 per cent is the unemployment rate for August 2010 in Greece according to the National Statistical Service. This is the highest value recorded since January 2004. The unemployment rate increased by 3.2 percentage points compared with August 2009 when its value was 9 percent. The European statistical agency Eurostat reported that the estimated average unemployment rate in the Eurozone countries in August this year is 10 per cent.  

The absolute amount of unemployed in Greece for the period exceeded 613,000 people and the total number of working people in the country is a little more than 4.39 million. The unemployment rate for women rose to 15.5 percent from 11.6 percent in August 2009, while for men it increased to 9.9 percent from 7.2 percent.

According to the statistical office, most affected by lack of professional opportunities are the young people. In the 15-24 age group the percentage is 30.8 percent and 16.4 percent of the total are the unemployed in the 25-34 age group. Most serious is the situation in the regions of central and eastern Macedonia and Thessaly, and the lowest unemployment rate in August was recorded for the Ionian Sea islands (5.6%). The union of private employees estimated that this winter the number of unemployed will reach one million people.  

Meanwhile, the Ministry of Labour and Social Security is working on a new law that circumvents the obligations under the collective agreement (minimum wage, an eight-hour working day, the right to bonuses and allowances, etc.) in order to provide more flexible employment arrangements between employers and employees. The Ministry hopes that rescheduling the payments of the costs of social security (and in some cases reduce the value of contributions) will enable troubled companies to keep their workers. Thus the government hopes that small and medium companies will manage to keep the number of jobs, rather than to resort to layoffs to cut costs.