Two statistics reports shed light into the economic situation of Greeks. One report published by the Greek Labor Ministry says that 2 out of 0 Greeks earn less than 500 euro per month. The second report published by EUROSTAT says that 3 out of 10 Greeks live below the poverty line and that the situation worse than in Greece is in Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia.
According to data about employment in Greece collected by the information system ERGANI the country’s private sector employes currently 1,371,450 people. In comparison 2,800,000 people were employed and insured at IKA social security fund for private sector employees before the crisis.
Two out of ten Greeks workers, ie 279,776 people receive a monthly salary below 500 euros per while 160,000 employees earn monthly salary between 1,000 and 1,500 euro.
79,76 % ( 1,091,674 ) received over 500 euros.
From this, 7.61 % earn 500-600 euros and
32.21 % earns 1000-1200 euro.*.
According to ERGANI, 20,24 % of employees work part time or on job rotation .
Now I will tell you how part time job looks in Greece now a days:
A part-time job can be 6 hours x 6 days per week = 36 hours per week, when full time job is considered to be 40 hours per week.
A part-time salary can be 250-300 euro, but it can be also 700 euro gross or more, depending on employer and skills.
Let’s say you get a part-time job for 750 euro gross. You will receive 550-600 euro net. For a basic apartment of 50 sqm you will pay 300 euro for rent.
If your partner is jobless or you live alone, or you live with a child or a parent… how you will spend the rest of your salary to pay for food, toiletries, telephone, water, electricity and heating … is just history…”
As for the Eurostat report exploring poverty in European union,
23.5% of the Greek population lives in poverty
19.5% lives in needy condition
14.1% lives in a family faced with the risk of unemployment.
In Romania, Bulgaria and Latvia poverty is some 40%.
According to Eurostat
“Poor” is someone, when income is below 60% of median national income.
“Living in need” means one is deprived of basic consumer goods.
In the utopian world of statistics, the European Union, “poor” is considered someone with less than 6,000 euro annual income. In the real world of Greeks, the Finance Ministry imposes taxes also to those with income below the 6,000 euro, an income tax based on fictitious criteria.
Now either the EU should revise the description of “poor” or the Greek Finance Ministry and the Troika – i.e. Greece’s lenders including the EU should consider to tax the real rich.
* should we assume that the rest earns more than 1,200 euro gross in Greece’s public sector nowadays? Or is this statistics similar to the pension statistics in the private sector, when the majority gets 900 euro per month one the paper, while the majority people like you and me know receives 500-600 euro pension?
Possible is also that the Ministry includes in this statistics also the salaries of employees in the utility companies (Power, water etc), who normally receive salary levels or public sector and even more. But that’s the Greek statistics as everyone know…
PS Be patient! “Growth will come in 2014,” said PM Samaras on Wednesday.
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