I love Greek statistics. Honestly. They pose a challenge to any math-dude and long-memory impaired person. Every month unemployment hits a new record but every month the new unemployment rate is lower than the rate of the previous month. How comes? Oh, the rates of the previous months are revised due to ‘seasonal work and employment’.
Nevertheless, it doesn’t really make a big difference if unemployment is 26.7% or 26.8% or 27% as ELSTAT had officially announced in February. It makes not big difference is youth unemployment is 60% or 58%. And it really does not change the lives of people to know unemployed are 1,32 million or 1,31 million.
Fact is that one in three Greeks has no job and income and the unemployment rises without stop. Fact is also that short-term seasonal employment and low wages do not solve the people’s problems on long term. Growth can wait…
Greece’s unemployment rate increased to record high in March
Greece’s unemployment rate rose to a record in March amid a sixth year of an economic slump deepened by austerity measures tied to the country’s bailouts from the euro area and International Monetary Fund.
The seasonally adjusted jobless rate rose to 26.8 percent from a revised 26.7 percent in February, the Athens-based Hellenic Statistical Authority said in an e-mailed statement today. The median estimate of three economists in a Bloomberg survey was 27.1 percent. The February unemployment rate was revised from a previous reading of 27 percent.
Greece is in a recession amplified by austerity measures linked to 240 billion euros ($315 billion) of loans from the euro area and IMF since it was shut out of bond markets in 2010. Gross domestic product fell 6.4 percent in 2012 and the IMF said in a report yesterday it will drop 4.2 percent this year before output expands in 2014.
The unemployment rate for Greeks aged 15 to 24 was 58.3 percent, while the total female unemployment rate was 30.4 percent. The region with the highest unemployment rate was Epirus-western Macedonia, with 29.9 percent joblessness.
The March unemployment rate is the highest level since the agency began publishing monthly data in 2004. (via Capital.gr)
