It is official, one in every five citizens in Greece are unemployed. The Hellenic Statistics Authority (ELSTAT) said in an announcement on Thursday that unemployment hit a record high in December reaching 21 percent rising slightly over November when it was documented at 20.9 percent. The average unemployment rate for 2011 jumped to 17.3 percent from 12.5 percent in the previous year. More exactly, 1,033,507 people were without work in December, marking a 41 percent increase over the same period in 2010. Year on year, the number of people in the work force also marked a decrease of 7.9 percent dropping to an all time low of only 3,899,319 persons.
But these are the formal figures, it is suspected that the real unemployment figure is around 30-33 percent if one takes into account all of those who did not register that they were unemployed, or those that worked on the black market, as well as those who just stopped looking for employment.
In less than three years the unemployment figures doubled for the 15-24 age group rising to roughly 51.1 percent. At the same time, the Greek economy shrunk by a about a fifth since 2008. Some 600,000 jobs have been lost in the process.
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