The Greek unemployment rate rose from 2 percent in the 1960s to 9-10 percent in the 1990s. This reflected the increase in female participation rates, the slowdown in growth, the restructuring of production, and the increased mismatch between jobs and job seekers. But the most crucial factor was the persistence of real wage aspirations. The paper develops and tests a model that attributes this to the rapid expansion in the number of easy, life-time government jobs and the increase in the public/private wage differential during the 1980s.

The Greek unemployment rate rose from 2 percent in the 1960s to 9-10 percent in the 1990s. This reflected the increase in female participation rates, the slowdown in growth, the restructuring of production, and the increased mismatch between jobs and job seekers. But the most crucial factor was the persistence of real wage aspirations. The paper develops and tests a model that attributes this to the rapid expansion in the number of easy, life-time government jobs and the increase in the public/private wage differential during the 1980s.

The duration of unemployment spells in Greece is investigated by looking at developments over time and by estimating duration models for unemployed men using data from the 2005 Greek Labour Force Survey (LFS). The prolongation of spells since the 1990s reflects the rise in the overall unemployment rate and the increased probability of transition from short-term to long-term unemployment. The limited number of new jobs, due inter alia to the stringent regulatory environment in product and labour markets, might be contributing to the differences in the percentage of long-term unemployment between Greece and the EU-15. Estimates of duration models suggest that older individuals with no previous work experience, in high-unemployment regions are more likely to experience longer unemployment spells while education appears to differentiate the length of spells amongst younger individuals. There is some tentative evidence of positive duration dependence in the first few months of the spell, which, however, turns negative as the spell continues.

Greece’s economy and society have undergone important structural changes in recent years as a result of the financial crisis and consequent austerity policies that have been implemented. The Greek labour market and employment relations system have been subject to immense pressures, leading to fundamental changes both in the structure of institutions and in the behaviour of the main employment relations actors. The present volume constitutes a first attempt to appreciate the consequences of a decade of austerity politics on the Greek labour market. Offering a multidisciplinary perspective and building on original research by leading Greek scholars in the fields of labour economics, employment relations and the sociology of work, it will discuss the impact of the crisis and the resulting policies on the Greek labour market and employment relations. This volume will be of interest to policy makers, researchers and students interested in the past, present and future of Greek employment relations and the impact of austerity on Greece.

This senior project talks about the unemployment problem of Greece, and examines the conditions of Greek unemployment for the last 25 years. In this project I traveled through the years from 1995 to today, I wrote down the statistics, trends, and projections for the future of unemployment in Greece. In this project I attempt to answer the question, Is Greece's Nightmare Over which is something difficult to answer. In this project, I review historical decisions by the Greek governments over the years and its consequences regarding unemployment. In order to understand the problem of Greece we need to first understand its labor market structure, something that is explained in this project. I also depicted the social effect of the financial crisis on people of Greece over the years of harsh austerity by presenting the suicide rates increases in those years. Continuing, I talked about the current trends and the big 10% reduction in unemployment from 28% in 2014 to 18.0% in December of 2018 and the policies that the current Greek government used to achieve this reduction. Finally, I introduced a projection of unemployment, from 2019 to 2022 which shows a further reduction of unemployment if the current trend continues, and I shared an employment program that I believe can certainly help Greece recover even more from its problem, which is still relatively high compared to the rest of the EU countries.

Recoge: 1. Labour market analysis and forecats - 2. Labour market institutions - 3.Labour market legislation - 4. Labour market policies - 5. Issues of national debate and policy perspectives.