An anemic recovery is currently taking place in Greece. This has led to some job creation in a labour market still reeling from the depression that the country went through. Since little attention has been paid to detail thus far it would be more than interesting to try and map the characteristics of any job gains accrued. Certain aspects of this anemic bout of job creation are somewhat surprising and definitely very different from those of the last such wave that took place during the 00s.
For the aforementioned goals to come into fruition, data from Labour Force Survey's quarterly series were used. This dataset has some pros and cons, the main pro being its detail and the main con being that it's not seasonally adjusted, something not particularly helpful in the case of Greece's tourism-heavy economy where seasonality is ever-present. To overcome this last issue and smooth seasonal variations out, 4-quarter moving averages of all the series will be used, something that while not ideal does not distort the underlying picture.
The first dimension that has to be looked into is the sectors that created the jobs.
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
In the current recovery the leader in job creation is the tourism sector, with retail trade in second place and manufacturing in third (i.e. two of the three top job-creating sectors belong to the tradable sector).
The exact opposite was true for the 2001 - 2007 period.
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
In this case, the 6 top job-creating sectors were of the non-tradable variety with just Tourism (which ranked 7th) belonging to the tradable family. So, a distinct feature of this recovery is that tradable sectors account for most (or at least for a big part) of those "new jobs".
Another lens through which to examine the jobs created is their spatial distribution. During the 00s, more than half of the new jobs created were in the Attica region. This time around though Attica accounted for just 17% of new jobs.
In fact, as far as where the number of employed persons stands regarding to employment's pre-depression peak, Attica ranks dead last among all Greek provinces. It is worth mentioning that Central Macedonia, whose capital is Thessaloniki, was a larger contributor during the current recovery.
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
In fact, as far as where the number of employed persons stands regarding to employment's pre-depression peak, Attica ranks dead last among all Greek provinces. It is worth mentioning that Central Macedonia, whose capital is Thessaloniki, was a larger contributor during the current recovery.
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
If we move on and take a look at the age distribution of the persons who filled those new jobs we come across something unexpected that seems to belie quite a lot of anecdotal evidence making the rounds in Greece. Or does it? Namely, the vast majority of new jobs where filled by people belonging in the 45-64 age class. What's even more remarkable is that at the same time unemployment for people in that age group is indeed pretty sticky (anecdotal evidence were not wrong after all). So how did this age bracket account for the lion's share of job creation? The answer is because its inactives came back into the labour force. Someone more cynical than me would ask, "were those people really inactive or just working informally who for some reason or other decided to make their employment formal?" and put this whole post's raison d'être into question in the process. Well, your guess is as good as mine...
If we move on to the educational background of the people filling those new jobs one can find out that the majority of positions were filled by technical education/vocational degree holders while the second largest group was people with a secondary education background.
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
If we move on to the educational background of the people filling those new jobs one can find out that the majority of positions were filled by technical education/vocational degree holders while the second largest group was people with a secondary education background.
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
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| source: ELSTAT, own calculations |
First, there seems to be a premium attached to somebody having a post-graduate degree since people who do so account for a much larger chunk of jobs created than their respective population share. Second, people with a technical/vocational education background also account for a significantly larger share of new jobs than what their share of total population would imply. Third, people with a secondary education background are also over-represented, implying that the technological content of a big chunk of new positions is not particularly high. Finally, people with lower educational backgrounds are not represented at all in job creation, a fact indicating that these are almost solely people beyond retirement age who have (or are in the process of) dropped out of the labour force.
To sum this up, the effort to map the distribution of recent job gains according to a number of different variables produced some quite interesting and, in some cases, surprising results. In an effort to sum findings up, we could say that contrary to the last recovery, this time around the top job creator seem to be the country's tradable sector (mostly tourism) while, also unlike in the last expansion, the lion's share of new jobs were created outside the province of Attica (where Athens is located). In perhaps the most surprising result produced by the data-crunching undertaken to write this post, it turns out that more than 70% of new jobs were filled by people aged between 45 - 64 years old. On another note, postgraduate qualifications as well as technical and vocational degree holders seem to be in high demand while people with a basic educational attainment also don't seem to go to waste implying that a lot of the jobs created are in sectors with a middling to low technological content. That is all for now, thank you for taking the time to read the post.
