As Greece is plunging into a deeper recession, more and more businesses are shutting down, public (government) spending is decreasing and as a consequence a lot of people are losing their jobs.
A closer look on this group of unemployed people may reveal some very interesting things which we will point out in this article. With this in mind, I will also pose some questions which perhaps some of you might also consider or have done so in the past and will try to give you my perspective.
Is unemployment rate in Greece high?
Probably most of us have a friend or relative that is currently unemployed. As far as I am concerned this is true. Greece is considered to have a high unemployment rate (11.8% in Q2 2010). Is this high? Of course! Is it too high? Well, for a country that is under recession + under IMF's rules it's not! We should feel a little bit better if one considers that i.e. Spain another member of Euro zone has 20% unemployment rate and is not under recession! So what is going on? Why is this happening to us?
Who is actually driving the Greek economy: businesses or government?
Continuing our analysis from the previous question, one has to really go deeper into the numbers and test basic hypotheses for the Greek economy. Normally you would expect that economy is being driven by businesses and not government, this is the de-facto truth across developed economies, worldwide. Well this is not the case in Greece! Imagine a country (in our case Greece) that has approx. 25% of its total working population working in/for the government whilst the government is the major financing body of country's major projects (railways, harbours, highways, airports, energy etc) as well as the biggest employer by far (actually as we speak, a census is currently undergoing of country's public workforce - some say 600.000 others say more than 1 million!).
If you step back and take a look at local news ads then you will see a huge list of classifieds (all sorts of specialties). That said it is worth wondering why people (especially the young ones) say that unemployment is their major problem! My understanding is the following; I am a strong believer that if one really wants to work, there will always be someone in the market to offer a position.
"Overqualified" generation?
It is common knowledge that our society has the most highly educated-unemployed people, probably in all EU. We will focus in this category of modern young people, just finishing higher education and those already looking for work.
Probably at some point of your professional path you have come across the term "you are overqualified and therefore we cannot afford you!» Is this the most awful thing one can say to you or what? So what can you do? You start feeling afraid that if you submit your CV into any job offer you will not be selected because employers will discard you from the beginning of the selection process and those who will want to meet you, eventually will tell you that you are overqualified! It's a dead end, I know it!
Well, the most challenging thing is not to overcome the "overqualified" issue but the growing fear that you have to master! Up to this point and given that your country is at least generating new job offers you have nothing to worry about...
Currently we are dealing with, a new "overqualified" generation of Greek immigrants. These modern Greeks have some very interesting characteristics:
a) They are very well educated; most of them have Bachelors, Masters and some even PhD’s,
b) They have the financial means to travel virtually to any country (especially within EU),
c) They are multilingual, most of them speak fluent English and have a second language at a proficient level (German, French, Italian, Spanish and most recently Chinese),
d) They have, at least once, travelled to a European country therefore are familiar with local lifestyle and habits,
e) They are at their most productive years, usually between 25 and 35, therefore attractive to employers,
And most importantly
d) They are eager to work!
Although I am happy for them pursuing their dream in a more "friendly" environment, I would be lying to you if I said that this is definitely our nation's true loss of capital and strength!
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