According to information released by Greece’s statistical authority (ELSTAT), the number of those registered unemployed in the country narrowly exceeded 602,000 in May 2010. This counts for 12% of the country’s workforce, compared to 8.5% and 11.9% in May 2009 and April 2010 respectively. According to the same data, the total number of those in employment was 4.431.326. The unemployed were 602.185, while the so-called “financially inactive population” was 4.267.994 people.
The number of those unemployed has increased by 181.784 compared to May 2009 (an increase of 43,2%) and by 5.206 compared to April 2010 (0,9% increase).
Source: Eleftherotypia Athens Daily
Translator’s note: the above figures concern the officially employed and those registered unemployed. Since the unofficial labour market is huge in the country and since there are little benefits coming with registering unemployed, it is widely acknowledged that the true number of those unemployed is, in fact, much larger.
33 Comments
What is happening in Greece is a harbinger of things to come. The United States is also spending beyond its means and pretending that it can continue to do so. I suspect that many countries will soon be faced with looking at what really works economically and what doesn’t.
There is not a single Capitalist country in the world where the populace at large will be asked what they think works economically. They will be told what works Capitalistically. And the identification ,never made explicit, that all economic activity is always either Capitalist or a deformation of its principles will pervade a series of
sermons from the wealthy mount. But these tedious devices cannot save the Capitalist process from itself. This historical precursor to juvenile species life proper has reached its ugly end game.
As long as the streets are empty in holidays and the streets are full with cars on normal days there is no crisis at all; it’s all just blabla of the decadent 1st world minority sucking the blood of the majority and dance to starvation.
In countries like Greece may be 5% of the people could think different and in the imperialist strongeholds it’s may be 1% maximum. There will be no revolution in this 1st world overpopulated monsters of cilvilization and the only thing “revolutionaries” can do is bomb it all but they won’t. so forget it all and bomb yourself.
I have experienced unemployment myself so i know what i am talking about. It is not nice situation, you cannot buy new clothes & computers etc. You cant even eat at restaurants cause you have no money, so you just sit home and there is nothing to do. After a while it starts to get on your nerve and you might even get depressed and have suicidal thoughts. Thank god i found myself a job. I am sure that in 1-3 years Greece gets its economy running again and then majority of those who are unemployed now can find new jobs. So there is always hope that things will get better. Just wait and see.
Comment number 3 is inaccurate. In my holiday i spend much less than normal, as i live in the home of my grandparents in the countryside and eat mostly vegetables and milk that comes from their garden and their goats. I’m not coming here in order to do my holidays of my dreams, but to live quietly and without money the days i have my days-off. Some friends whoes grandparents don’t come from the countryside, have put their tents in the beach in front of my house and also spend much less than normally.
I think that most greeks do this in the summer, so the idea that cities are empty and this means that people have money is totally inaccurate.
Werewolfs comments remind me of the song “Pie in the Sky” by Joe Hill.
“You will eat,
by and by,
in that glorious land in the sky,
(way up high!)
work and pray,
Live on hay,
you’ll get pie in the sky when you die!
(thats a lie!)”
Thanks ‘bullshit society’, your bullshit politics gave me a good chuckle.
If Greek people would have paid their bloody taxes, being more moral and stop acting like retards nothing of all these would happen. But since the communists taken over the country expect that. Simply avoid Greece and boycot it. Europe has nothing to do with these lazy idiots who live in a lala land hoping they will change the world. Screw them. I am Irish and I don’t want my taxes to go for a bunch of lazy crooks. Let them suffer.
Further more I agree with the comment 3.
If Greeks want communism please LEAVE us alone. We want OUR countries back. New World Order will not pass.
@NOTHING
It’s nice you remind us the difference between the open minded people and scumbags like you!
“If Greek people would have paid their bloody taxes….” pretty much sounds like you are nothing more but a brainwashed counter-productive sheep.
“But since the communists taken over the country expect that”… FAIL!!! Once you say that we have to pay our taxes to contribute to the system which you don’t like cause it is communism!!! Do you understand what you have said??? Too much guiness has melted your brain hasn’t it?
“Europe has nothing to do with these lazy idiots who live in a lala land”…FAIL
From what I see here, YOU live in a lalaland cause what you are talking is simply wrong. You don’t even know what’s going on in Greece, you haven’t lived in Greece and I bet you have no idea where Greece is in the map, just like many people in your country who confuse Spain with Greece… what a disgrace!!!
“If Greeks want communism please LEAVE us alone” FAIL AGAIN!!! we don’t want communism and you know it. This is an anarchist website. Anarchism and communism are completely different ideologies. A lot of anarchists and Trotskists have been excecuted during the Stalin era. Go here rizospastis.gr (the official newspaper of the communist party) and sort out your differences with them. This site has nothing to do with Stalinism which is what you refer to. And please believe me, we don’t want the EU. We don’t want some other countries to bail us out. The fastest we get out of the EU the best for us. They did not ask us if we want it, they did not consult us if we want the Euro. Nobody wanted to be a mamber of the EU just 40 years ago except the conservatives.
“New World Order will not pass” and do you know what is the NWO? Read some Chomsky before and leave stop being a fan of Alex Jones and other conspiraloons.
Your fascism will not pass.
@BULLSHIT SOCIETY
Bullshit by name, Bullshit by nature!!!
@WEREWOLF
I really wonder are you drunk just like the Irish psycho above or maybe a special case! Don’t you see that Europe has nothing to do with what it was 15 years ago? Don’t you see that EU is turning into an economy of the two ways, the strong north and the weak south? Greek economy will never improve as IMF has been involved. Every country which had to do with the IMF was doomed. And EU does not want Greece to improve. It is nothing more but Europe’s testing zone.
BlACKFOXGR This is a sometime anarchist website judging by its users. Myself I’m a communist in two senses. I subscribe to the metric from the from the 18th century ‘From each according to means. To each according to needs’ . Secondly in the bog standard Marxist sense of an end to any social organization based on classes. As to the political form under which this happy state of affairs may be achieved I confess I don’t know. An understanding of the Capitalist mode of bondage doesn’t of itself provide a route map to freedom.
@nothing.I think you’re the one livin in ‘la la land’.Greece arent the only ones with a high unemployment rate.Might I remind you that our (ireland) rate of uemployment is sitting at around 14 percent.The greeks also work on average some of the longest hours in europe so next time get yoor facts straight
@NOTHING-
Your taxes to the EU will more than likely end up in the pockets of an already wealthy pan-european class of politicians, bureaucrats and bankers…As for tax evasion, you should look closer to home with your own brand of corrupt politicians (lazy crooks), while you’re at it, look at the collapsed property market, the homelessness, and the unemployment created by public sector cuts in Ireland ..Of-course these realities are not exclusively ‘Irish’ of ‘Greek’ -there was a global financial crisis caused by the unregulated, rapacious greed of an international class of sociopathic bankers, the logical outcome of the socio-economic system called CAPITALISM or did you miss it? Ordinary working people -the majority, (subjected to the class system under CAPITALISM) around the world are going to pay for the mindless, slobbering, anti-social materialism of a tiny minority, and the empty pleasure they get from thinking themselves as an ‘elite’ (in Lala-land).
Your stupidity and prejudice is quite astounding -The offensive remarks you make about Greeks sounds like the same sort of drivel the Imperialist English used to say about the Irish… As for the rest, you’re just babbling ill-informed shit.
@NOTHING
as the other commenters have said, you better try to wake up from your sleep and realize that the years of McCarthy are over. And BTW Ireland has much higher unemployed than Greece and it was always much worse.
And stop acting like a retard white supremacist. You are not a WASP
@BLACKFOXGR
We are all special cases. Everyone is important in their own special way, i love you, you are important. You say greek economy will never improve. Some people not so long ago said humans can never go to moon. There is no reason why greek economy cannot grow and people have good lives. It is people who make decicions, i think greek is on right path now. It is time for that nation to stop fooling themselves and admit reality even thou it hurts. This is the only way to built country more strong and more free. I dont know that much about greek politics, but i have feeling that PASOK and mr Papandreou are good people trying to save their country and people. I respect them for making hard decicions that are unpopular AT THE MOMENT but needed to make to save their people. Masses are sometimes too stupid to see big picture NOW, they just try to hold on their short term benefits. I respect anarchist for wanting freedom but critizise them for being naive and not taking responsibility. Wise man knows that freedom is never free. “Libertad o muerte! Freedom or death” –Fidel Castro
“I dont know that much about greek politics”
Bollox… if you don’t know about Greece
@WEREWOLF
“I dont know that much about greek politics”
Bollox… if you don’t know about Greece then why you are commenting? Do some reasearch and learn that Mr Papadreou (the one you call him good people) does exactly what the fascist party LA.O,S orders. This government is nothing more but a gestabo in disguise.
“i think greek is on right path now”
Yes exactly right, having our wages reduced by 30%, having our bonuses cut off, more police, more repression, more state brutality… meh… you are simply drunk!!!
“There is no reason why greek economy cannot grow and people have good lives” I am telling you again because you did not read what I wrote and that pisses me off. Greece is Europe’s testing zone and the best we have to do is to say a nice goodbye to a bunch of eurocrats. The fastest the better.
“I respect anarchist for wanting freedom but critizise them for being naive and not taking responsibility”. The only naive here is you who knows nothing about Greece and keep on posting childish comments who have nothing to do with the reality. You are very reactionary. No Greek person will appreciate your attitude so far
@BlackFoxGR-
Ignore WEREWOLF he/she is some crackpot christian UFO nut, not worth your, or my breath…
Roll on THE Greek September-
WE WANT EVERYTHING, THE REST WE WILL TAKE!
@BLACKFOXGR
I said i dont know much about greek politics, but i seem to know more than you so i want to correct some of your wrong ideas here. LA.O.S. party is not actually facist but christian conservative party working inside parliamentary democratic system. Mr Papandreou and PASOK does not follow orders from LA.O.S, they are actually political rivals in election. I think you may have mistaken LA.O.S. party to Golden Dawn -party, they are facists, but they have no representatives in the parliament.
“Anyone who follows Greece closely will note that the intensity of true public discontent has been surprisingly low. It appears that however unhappy many people may be with a reduced income and the fact that their country has been shamed by thieves and incompetents, they also understand the need for reforms.”
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_100022_09/08/2010_118936
“LA.O.S. party is not actually facist but christian conservative party” you sound like an American Republican don’t you? For the American standards ok LAO.OS is not a fascist party, but for us the Greeks who know our history and that all the conservatives have strong links with the military dictatorship we can understand that LA.O.S is an ultra right wing party. For an American not even the military junta was fascist.
LA.O.S want to introduce the death penalty for the drug dealers. Similarly like BNP, NPD and other white nationalist far right parties.
LA.O.S wants to shut down the anonimity of the blogs http://blackfoxgr.com/articles/censhorship/
LA.O.S demands deportation for all the immigrants and keep it’s number below 3%, similarly with the BNP
LA.O.S has said that the soldiers of the special forces who screamed death racist chants against the immigrants during the national parade day of the 25 of March were right.
Mr Plevris is strongly anti-semitist and his father openly declares to be nazist.
It is well documented that LA.O.S works together with neonazi groups who have blamed for attacking immigrants.
Adonis Georgiadis is an obsessed anti-communist who does not hesitate to slagg off immigrants and he will be more than happy to shut the door in their face
MrKaratzaferis before getting his seat in the parliament has openly called the Golden Dawn and the royalists paleo-conservatives for a super right wing coalition against the leftists and the immigrants.
Have you seen the youth wing of LA.O.S? Their anti-communist hysteria makes McCarthy look like a Bolshevik. They hate foreigners especially those who are outside the EU and many times they declare Greek superiority.
Many members of the LA.O.S write in the neo fascist news papers stoxos ( stoxos.gr ) against the immigrants who “are taking over our country”
MrKaratzaferis has been many times described as the Greek version of Lepen but with a more political correct profile.
MrKaratzaferis has been blamed for making a nazi salute a few years ago
MrVoridis and his friends were been cought of in a phtoto walking with an axe in order to attack immigrants and he has declared that “we must secure our borders in order to keep our country clean from invaders”
“Mr Papandreou and PASOK does not follow orders from LA.O.S”
FAIL
Mr Karatzaferis supports that the blogs in Greece should not be anonimous. Now, the government wants to introduce a new law for those who open blogs to have permission from the police. MrKaratzaferis has congradulated many times MrPapandreou for taking tough measures against the working class people.
“I said i dont know much about greek politics, but i seem to know more than you so i want to correct some of your wrong ideas here” fuck off and go back to your couch, worship God and order some McDonalds.
Hands off Greece you stupid Americans. Greece is not your playground idiots
Can you please tell me what political ideology you think suits you more. Left, right, progressive, liberal, anarchism, socialism, Marxism, communism, coservatism, independent…
Learn that the world is not only what the TV tells you. I don’t think you are so naive as you pretend to be please cut the bullshit!
@NOTHING
If refusing to work under third world conditions with a salary that is not enought to live even just one week, if that makes me lazy then I am lazy. If fighting for my rights makes me a terrorist, communist etc then I am terrorist and proud of it. Better be a “terrorist” than a sheep.
http://blackfoxgr.com/articles/are-all-greeks-lazy/
Comrades, i strongly urge you to read text i linked before. It says “Greece is living through a REVOLUTION, the first real attempt to set the country on course toward a viable future”.
http://www.ekathimerini.com/4dcgi/_w_articles_columns_100022_09/08/2010_118936
WEREWOLF I followed this link imagine my surprise. An endless supply of middle class drivel lacking only the coffee table on which to rest. Capitalism doesn’t have a viable future. And those that think it does preserve their happy ignorance by only talking to each other.
WEREWOLF isn’t worth the pixels he’s written in, like any pest, it’s best to ignore him and he’ll go away. The quality of discussion here suffers when we engage in debate with someone who takes Ekathemerini’s editorial line as gospel…Even if he ‘loves’ us and thinks we are his ‘comrades’…Yawn…
It would really have fun to read some of these comments, if the situation was different. The fact is though that large parts of the population face poverty and unemployment in the next months, and the economy of greece will default in a while, like most economies that were under the IMF. Even the masses, that their opinion is not normally respected by the anarchists, have understood this and the question is if they have the strength to resist.
You’ll be here, and i hope i’ll be here, to talk about the real problems, which are not if we need to resist or not, but how will this happen.
Solidarity from other places does not mean to bailout the capitalistic economy that faces problems in this area of the world, which is actually our (and your) enemy. Solidarity is to fight and resist against capitalism in your place.
LALALAND ‘ ‘Solidarity is to fight and resist against capitalism in your place’. Yes I think this an unvarnished truth. And for all the public confidence of the agents of social passivity they know they haven’t got an ally they haven’t bought.
I read this blog fairly regularly, and im interested to see what people think is in the future for greece, as far as the revolutionary left goes.
as of right now, the government has largely broken 2 of the 3 armed revolutionary groups. the last one, revolutionary sec, seems to be the least interested in movement building.
the coalition for the radical left seems to be in fought with some pretty damaging infighting and divisions.
and the communist party seems to have gain a small increase in public support, but nothing in terms of tangible gains.
where can this go from here?
FRANK before the Crash every significant party in terms of membership had tied its fate to Capitalism(in the USA and across Europe). All of these parties now either implement or support degrading the working class( reducing its real income ,increasing pauperism etc) And it seems to me that there is no end in sight for this process. So there is going to be a growing working class audience for radical solutions to the Capitalist conundrum. Without a revival of the economic status quo a revival of the political status quo is unlikely. But the economic ordering among Capitalist states is at a point of transition. And consequently ‘Interesting Times’ are here for a generation.
@BABEOUF-
I think you surely meant to say the working class will be the actors in, rather than the audience ‘for radical solutions’…?
Talking of which, is there any history of unwaged greek workers self-organising, as has happened in Italy, Argentina, France etc.? Opportunity for the creation of mutual aid centres and autonomous spaces?
INCUBUS no I don’t they are likely to provide an audience before they are actors. It is possible that these two events will combine and the working class will figure as audience and actor. In periods of economic dislocation when social passivity and inertia dominate the mouths of workers may be closed by fear but their ears are open.
This is perhaps what we both mean:-
Menelaos Givalos, a professor of political science at Athens University, has appeared on television, warning viewers that the worst times are still to come. He predicts a large wave of layoffs starting in September, with “extreme social consequences.”
“Everything is getting more expensive, I’m hardly earning any money, and then I’m supposed to pay more taxes to help save the country? How is that supposed to work?” asks Nikos Meletis, the shipbuilder. His friends, gathered in a small cafeteria on the pier in Perama, are gradually growing more vocal. They are all unemployed, desperate and angry at the politicians who got them into this mess. There is no sympathy here for any of the political parties and no longer any for the unions either.
“They only organize strikes to serve their own interests!” shouts one man, whose name is Panayiotis Peretridis. “The only thing that interests me anymore is my daily wage. A loaf of bread is my political party. I want to help my country — give me work and I’ll pay taxes! But our honor as first-class skilled workers, as heads of families, as Greeks, is being dragged through the dirt!”
“If you take away my family’s bread, I’ll take you down — the government needs to know that,” Meletis says. “And don’t call us anarchists if that happens! We’re heads of our families and we’re desperate.”
He predicts the situation will only become more heated. “Things are starting to simmer here,” he says. “And at some point they’re going to explode.”
From:-
http://www.spiegel.de/international/europe/0,1518,712511,00.html
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