Job numbers on their way down as the summer ends

The strongly seasonal character of the Greek labor market was clear to see in August's job hiring and departure statistics. The tail end of summer was accompanied by a reduction in the number of jobs by 7,748, mainly due to an increase in redundancies by hotels and food service enterprises - and that was despite hirings in private education.

The significant rise in the number of people starting jobs in the first few months of the tourism season resulted in hirings outnumbering departures in the January-August period. However, the reduction of the jobless rate will still associated with the domination of flexible forms of employment, with 55.88 percent of new hirings in August concerning flexible labor.

In total, hirings announced in the first eight months of the year numbered 1,786,045, while departures came to 1,504,232, of which 863,552 stemmed from redundancies or...