An article in Al Jazeera English highlights unemployment here in Greece.
Marios Kokkoris is 28 years old. He said
“The market in Greece is small, and closed; if you don’t know someone, it’s hard, and it’s the same in the public and private sector.”
Marios, who has undergraduate and postgraduate degrees in environmental sciences from the UK, lives at home in Athens with his parents, and doesn’t own a car or motorbike.
“Partially for environmental reasons, but also partially for economic reasons,” he said.
He is now looking for work in a bar, where he hopes he can earn $65 a day.
Greece loses many of its brightest and most dynamic young people because opportunities here are far and few between. Like Marios, they simply get tired of being undervalued and seek work elsewhere. Nepotism exists everywhere but here it is so common and normal that everyone jokes about it. You pretty much have to know someone to get anything done.
According to the European Union, 7.5 per cent of Greeks were unemployed in late 2008.
That is near the average unemployment rate for the 27 EU member countries, and slightly better than the average for the 15 euro zone countries.
What these statistics do not reveal, however, is that 20 per cent of Greeks under the age of 25 are unemployed, and the situation is especially difficult for young women
I believe that women face even more problems when they decide to have children. There is very little state supported child-care and if you don’t have willing and available grandparents, you stand very little chance of finding a decent job. Most of my Greek women friends who have children are unemployed. No employer is going to hire someone who is not available for the three month summer holidays (and the other frequent holidays and days when a child is sick etc etc). This is a rarely discussed issue because there is an assumption that women with children do not want to work. That they are somehow satisfied with that sacred job of raising children. In this time of financial crisis, it is almost impossible for a family to survive on a single wage so there is a real need for women to find paid work. Otherwise, more families are condemned to live in poverty.
Are there any solutions ?
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