Greece achieved the largest increase in employment among the 27 member states of the European Union over the past five years, according to the latest aggregate data from Eurostat, in another indication of the ongoing recovery of the labour market.

The number of employed and self-employed people in our country reached 69.3% of the population last year, a “jump” of 8.5 points compared to the 60.8% recorded in 2019.

This is almost a threefold increase in employment compared to the corresponding increase recorded on average in the EU (+3.1 points), but also the best performance of our country since the systematic collection of relevant data by Eurostat began.

Despite the improvement, Greece remains in penultimate place among the 27 Member States in terms of employment level, reflecting the loss of jobs during the 10-year crisis and the chronically low participation of women in the labour market.

However, coupled with the decline in unemployment to pre-crisis levels, down to 8.6% in February according to monthly ELSTAT figures, the large increase in employment demonstrates both that the Greek economy can now create jobs and the continued closing of the gap that separates Greece from the EU average.

The continued convergence with Europe is reflected in the fact that in 2019 the gap between employment in Greece and the EU as a whole reached 12 points, while last year the gap had fallen to 6.5 points.