Greece sees record jobs loss

By Idyli Tsakiri

ATHENS

Greece’s labor ministry on Tuesday revealed just under 30,000 jobs had been lost in January this year -- the steepest such total in 16 years.According to data published by the ministry, the equilibrium between jobs acquired and jobs lost for the first month of 2017 was negative by 29,817 work places.

More specifically, 126,501 people were hired in January while more than 156,000 lost their jobs -- more than 73,000 of them leaving willingly through retirement or going into education.January has almost always had a negative equilibrium since 2001, with the only exception being in 2014.

However, this year’s numbers are the worst the country has seen in the past 16 years.

Official data show more than half of the jobs created in January were either part-time openings or involved job rotation.According to the numbers, almost 20,000 more jobs were lost this January compared to January 2016, when the equilibrium was a few short of -10,000 work places.

The release of the data comes a day after Greece and its European creditors reached an understanding, during a Eurogroup meeting in Brussels on the country’s bailout program.

On Monday afternoon, the 19 Eurozone finance ministers decided that representatives of the lending institutions should return to Athens to resume bailout discussions.

“The Greek side accepted the enactment of reforms to be implemented from 1.1.2019 onwards, provided that the fiscal balance will be absolutely neutral,” the Greek government said after the meeting was over, stressing that there would be no more austerity measures.