Jobless rate down in third quarter of 2001
The unemployment rate – the number of jobless as a percentage of the active workforce – declined to 10 percent in the third quarter of 2001 from 10.7 percent in the same quarter in the previous year, the National Statistics Service (EYSE) said yesterday. The number of jobless as a percentage of the population dropped to 4.9 percent from 5.4 percent. The statistics service said that the number of jobs created in the third quarter of last year declined by 0.9 percent year-on-year. The number of wage-earners, however, rose by 2.8 percent and amounted to 96.1 percent of the total employed. Part-timers constituted just 3.9 percent of the total. EYSE said 434,800 people were without jobs in the third quarter of 2001. The unemployment rate among females fell by 1.4 percent to 14.9 percent against a 0.3 percent drop for jobless males to 6.7 percent. The statistics also showed that 47.9 percent of the unemployed or 208,300 were newcomers to the workforce, down by 6.3 percent. Of this figure, 47,944 were housewives seeking a job for the first time, indicating families hoping to boost their incomes. Youth unemployment was down by 12.7 percent in the third quarter of 2001. The unemployment rate declined the most drastically in Attica, the northern Aegean islands and the Peloponnese. The number of jobless was highest in western Macedonia, central Greece, Evia and Epirus.
