Employment in Greece

From a peak of 4.5 million workers in 2008, Greece has already lost 500,000 jobs. Our first chart shows that the country is already in its worst condition since the beginning of the century in terms of the share of the working age population who have a job (our projections are based on the last monthly data for 2011).

It is hard to see how laying off another 150,000 workers from the public sector, as requested for a new international loan, will help Greece to recover.

In the next chart we compare government tax revenues to employment, where tax data are from the sectoral accounts of Greece. Although the recent data revision to sectoral accounts are less pessimistic than the former release, we should expect the fall in employment to produce a corresponding fall in government revenues, with adverse effects on government deficits and debt.

What Greece needs are policies to create jobs.

(all data from El.Stat.)