Discrepancy emerges in the labor market
For every job vacancy in the entire Greek economy there are 18 unemployed people, according to the data the Hellenic Statistical Authority (ELSTAT) released on Thursday.
On the one hand this shows that the reduction in unemployment actually creates greater difficulty in covering job gaps, and on the other it illustrates that the skills of the unemployed do not match those that businesses want and look for.
Therefore, the number of vacancies during the first quarter of 2023 showed a rapid increase of 83.4% compared to the first quarter of 2022, while the unemployment rate decreased by two percentage points, to 11.8% from 13.8% a year ago.
The correlation of the two quantities is expectedly negative, since for a lower number of unemployed the filling of vacancies should be more difficult (Beveridge curve). However, according to experts, especially in recent years, after the first shock of the emergence of the pandemic, the correlation of the two figures also shows the so-called skills mismatch in the labor market.
During the first quarter of the year the number of job vacancies was 30,497, when for the same period the unemployed were estimated at 550,535 people.
The increase in vacancies compared to the first quarter of 2022, when they amounted to 16,603, was of the order of 83.4%, compared to an increase of 148.4% during the corresponding comparison of the year 2022 to 2021.
Accordingly, the unemployment rate, from 13.8% in the first quarter of 2022, fell to 11.9% in the first quarter of this year, showing stabilization trends compared to the 11.9% that had emerged in the fourth quarter of previous year. According to ELSTAT, the number of employed people reached 4,098,011, showing a decrease of 0.9% compared to the previous quarter and an increase of 1.3% compared to the corresponding quarter of the previous year.
Also, the number of unemployed people reached 550,535, showing a decrease of 1.4% compared to the fourth quarter of 2022 and a decrease of 14.9% compared to the corresponding first quarter of the previous year. People not in the labor force, or “people outside the labor force” meaning people neither working nor looking for work, totaled 4,392,839.
