Part-time work is on the rise as wages fall

Part-time workers and the hard-core unemployed have almost tripled during Greece’s debt crisis despite a recent drop in the jobless rate, the country’s largest labor union GSEE said Wednesday. Hundreds of thousands of people have lost their jobs in Greece since it tumbled into crisis in 2010.

With one in five now unemployed, others have lost almost a third of their incomes due to austerity measures and labor reforms agreed under three international bailouts.

Unemployment, at 21 percent in the second quarter, has decreased but it is still the eurozone’s highest. Unregistered work and part-time contract jobs have increased as businesses are desperate to cut costs.

“The situation in the labor market has improved in the first half of the year… but a series of quality indices create concerns,” GSEE’s research institute said in a report. About 267,000 workers are currently in part-time work, from 99,000 in 2008, a year before the crisis broke out, the institute said.

Apart from long-term unemployed, discouraged jobseekers, who have given up on actively seeking work, have increased to 109,000 from 37,000 in the same period, it added. [Reuters]