The reduction of real income from work by 8.3% in the three years 2019 – 2023, lag in signing collective labor agreements and difficulty for a third of households (36%) to cope with the costs of basic needs, found the INE GSEE annual report (Institute of Labor of GSEE) for economy and employment.
On the contrary, the data on the labor market shows “signs of improvement” with unemployment decreasing “but remaining – still – at high rates”, while the qualitative data records the differences in the employment of specific groups of population, such as women, young people. , but some geographic regions of the country.
INE GSEE for real income – How much it has decreased
According to the report as a whole, in the period 2019-2023 Greece recorded the largest percentage reduction in real income from work (-8.3%) compared to all EU-27 countries. Therefore, Greece not only does not interact with the EU-27 in terms of social sustainability, but also rapidly diverges from the northern European countries and from the peripheral countries, which developed rapidly at the same time.
Also, in 2023, only 19 Collective Labor Agreements (CLAs) of a sectoral or homoprofessional, national or local nature have been signed and approved by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. Of these, 12 are national sectoral and homo-professional, while 7 are local sectoral and homo-professional. In the same year, 209 operational collective agreements were also signed.
In terms of accuracy and poverty, the INE report observes that during the three-year period 2021-2023, approximately 36% of households in Greece face significant financial difficulties to cover their basics. need. In 2023 the proportion of part-time contractual workers at risk of poverty at work increased by 3.5 percentage points, with almost 22 out of 100 workers with disposable income below the poverty line, compared to 9 of 100 people working with a full-time contract.
Employment – Unemployment
The labor market situation in 2023 continues to show signs of improvement. Despite this fact, the performance of our country in a series of key indicators that determine the level and prospects of integration into the labor market, the quality of work, wages, protection and institutional empowerment of workers continue to deviate significantly from the counterparts in most EU states. .
In 2023, the employment rate in Greece, although increased compared to 2022, is 61.8%, a performance that ranks our country in the penultimate position among the member states. This figure is 8.6 percentage points lower than the EU average and more than 10 percentage points lower than other regional economies in the EU and Eastern Europe.
Differences in employment rates between specific population groups continue to be large. In particular, the divergence of the employment rate between men and women in Greece in 2023 amounts to 18 percentage points, a value that is the highest in the EU. 15-29 from the corresponding one of those aged 5 -64 years old increased by 27.4 percentage points, the seventh highest among the member states of the Union.
The difference in employment rates by region of the country is also large. The highest employment rates in 2023 are shown in the regions of Peloponnese (65.5%), Attica (64%), Central Greece (63.2%) and Crete (63%), while the lowest are the regions of Western Macedonia (55.6%). , Thessaly (58%) and Western Greece (59.4%). In addition, in the regions of Central Greece and South Aegean, the greatest difference in the employment rate between men and women was found (27.2 and 24 percentage points respectively), while the lowest was found in region of Attica (14 percentage points) , followed by the region of Epirus ( 15.7 percentage points).
Despite its continuous and significant reduction since 2014, the unemployment rate in our country remains high. In 2023 it stood at 11.1%, which is the second highest among the EU member states In addition, the unemployment rate among women aged 15-74 in Greece reached 14.3% in 2023 (the highest in the EU) , which registered a deviation of 5.8. percentage points from the male counterpart. Despite its reduction, the youth unemployment problem also remains serious, where the percentage of unemployed people aged 15-29 last year reached 21.8%.