The recent OECD Employment Outlook 2024 report shows a positive trend for the Greek labour market in recent years, with unemployment and job insecurity decreasing and employment and wages increasing. 

According to Athens News Agency, the report says that the largest reductions in job insecurity from 2015 to 2022 occurred in Greece and Spain—over 8 percentage points—resulting in a narrowing of the gap with the OECD average. 

The reduction in Greece is due to a significant decline in the unemployment rate and generous income protection measures during the pandemic, as well as the impact of the introduction of the Minimum Guaranteed Income.

Unemployment fell from just under 18% in December 2019 to close to 10% in April 2024, while labour force participation increased by over 2% between Q2 2019 and Q1 this year. 

The difficulty in hiring workers in various Greek economic sectors served as evidence of the tight labor market. The number of job vacancies per unemployed person in Greece was more than four times higher in Q1 this year than in Q2 2019, the largest increase among OECD countries. The report notes that difficulty finding workers is a global phenomenon that intensified after the pandemic, but while in other countries it had subsided in Q2 2023, in Greece it continued reaching a new high level. 

The average nominal wage in Greece was up close to 7% in Q1 2024 compared to the same period in 2023, and the real wage was up over 3%, with the minimum wage having increased by more than 20% over the last 5 years. The OECD analysis shows that the real average hourly wage for workers in sectors where it is lower, such as the restaurant and accommodation sector, rose 21% between Q1 this year and Q2 2019, more than in other OECD countries. On the other hand, the increase was marginal for medium-wage sectors such as manufacturing, transport, and real estate. 

These developments in Greece occurred against the backdrop of a resilient global labour market, with the unemployment rate falling to record low levels in 2023 in several countries and, correspondingly, the employment rate rising to high levels. 

The real minimum wage in May this year was up an average of 12.8 percent compared to May 2019 in the 30 OECD countries that have this institution, a rate much higher than the increase in the average real wage over the same period. Total employment was up 3.8% in April compared to the pre-pandemic period, and labour force participation was up 1.3 percentage points.