Mario Draghi: Greek workforce underutilised by 31.3%

Responding to a question submitted by MEP Nikos Chountis in the European Parliament, the President of the European Central bank (ECB), Mario Draghi painted a bleak picture of the Greek job market. According to Mr. Draghi, the real underutilisation of the Greek workforce had reached 31.3% in the 4th quarter of 2016. The figure reveals that the real impact on employment was nearly 8 percentage points worse than the official unemployment rate given by the Greek Statistical Services (ELSTAT) over the same period which amounted to 23.4%. The central banker explained in his written reply that the discrepancy occurred because the ECB factors in 3 additional elements in its evaluation. The first one is those who were registered as part-time workers but wanted full time work, those who desired to work, but had stopped actively seeking work because they felt disillusioned, and the “silent” jobless who were looking for work but were not registered because they were not immediately available to assume job duties within the statistically accepted two-week period. A comparative piece of data that is indicative of the impact the economic crisis has had on the Greek job market is in 2006 the under-utilisation of the workforce stood at 12.9%.