There are plenty of myths circulating in Greece about employment in the private sector as regards the number, age, the types of labour contracts, wages, and the ethnic background of employees.
The most recent data of the Unified Social Insurance Fund (EFKA) for May, 2019, largely reflect the realities and the number of insured people in the labour market.
The description and analysis of this data is extremely important both for those creating economic policy and for those politicians who unabashedly spew propaganda without knowledge or evaluation.
The total number of insured employees in the private sector were 2,369, 392 last May. Of these, 1,281,121 were men and 1,108,271 were women.
Of the total number of insured, 1,777,746 were full-time with an average
Salary of 1,166,76 euros. The average for men was 1,237,05 euros and 1.077,03 euros for women.
Another 715,875 were part-time workers with an average daily wage of 24.68 euros and an average monthly wage of 409,21 euros for 17 days of work per month.
Of the 2,100,654 employees in the private sector, or 88,66%, were of Greek decent and 11.34% were foreigners, of whom nearly half were of Albanian descent.
Smaller percentages of workers came from Pakistan, Bulgaria, Romania, Bangladesh, Georgia, Russia, Egypt, India, Ukraine, Poland, the UK, Philippines, China, Cyprus, Moldavia, Italy, Armenia, Germany. Syria, France, Turkey. Afghanistan, The Netherlands, Nigeria, Serbia, and Iraq.
Needless to say foreigners were employed mainly in the sectors of tourism, construction, agriculture, and heavy labour, which Greeks have long abandoned.
The largest concentration of workers (15.16%) was between the ages of 35-39 and 40-44 years of age (14.68%).
Those in pre-pension age brackets (55-59 years of age) make for only 6.84%, those between 60-64 were only 2.89%, while 0.65% of workers was over the age of 65.
The above data demonstrate that most workers retire at the age of 60 which has serious repercussions on the insurance system.
In any event, EFKA’s data must be evaluated firstly by the political system and especially those who spread propaganda freely based on unfounded theories.
Let us at long last face reality and conduct politics on this basis.
