According to statistics from OAED, the total number of registered unemployed in December 2020 amounted to 1.181.296 individuals versus 1.153.434 of November, which means that we had an increase in registered unemployed persons by 2.41% within a month and by 4.71% compared to December 2019, when the total number of registered unemployed persons in OAED was 1,128,421 people.
The 1,181,296 people registered with the OAED in December 2020 is a negative record for that month, at least since 2010, when the OAED began keeping records. The number of unemployed people registered with the OAED in December, even if we subtract the 47,964 people who say they're unemployed but not looking for work, is still higher than the number of people registered with OAED at the height of the debt crisis in 2013, when unemployment in Greece had reached 28%. Today, however, the ELSTAT, Based on October data, it estimates the number of unemployed people in Greece at 786,000 and gives an unemployment rate of 16.71%. How is this possible?;
Varoufakis' tweet
«The alchemy of memorandum figures has also affected unemployment: ELSTAT reports less than 800,000, i.e. a rate below 17%. However, the OAED reports 1,181,296 registered unemployed, i.e. over 26%, which means “real” unemployment of 30%. Members of the government, get organised so that you can all tell the same lie!», wrote yesterday, after the publication of the OAED data, the head of the Day 25 Yannis Varoufakis, raising questions that have been circulating for some time now. Since the pandemic began, we have all been surrounded by unemployed people or workers on furlough, so how can ELSTAT give an unemployment rate of 16.71%?;
The alchemy of memorandum figures has also affected unemployment: ELSTAT reports <800,000, i.e. a rate of 26%, which means «real» unemployment of 30%. Members of the government, get your act together so you can all tell the same lie!
— Yanis Varoufakis (@yanisvaroufakis) January 20, 2021
Because Varoufakis is the president of a parliamentary party, the ELSTAT responded with an announcement, and so we all learned a couple more things. The ELSTAT announcement specifically stated that for national statistical authorities, the number of unemployed, and therefore the unemployment rate, are estimated on the basis of a sample Labor Force Survey, which gives results that differ from those reported in the OAED's administrative registers of registered unemployment.
Continuing, the statistical authority's announcement noted that, based on the international definitions it uses, unemployed persons are defined as «persons who (a) are not working, (b) are immediately available to take up work, and (c) have been actively seeking work in the last four weeks, and that all of this is ascertained through a series of specific questions in the survey questionnaire. In contrast, in the OAED administrative register, active job search and availability for work are declared at the time of registration and are not updated.
How ELSTAT measures unemployed, employed, and inactive persons
Furthermore, the ELSTAT announcement continued, «individuals who work without insurance (undeclared work) or who have worked in temporary or casual jobs are recorded as employed» by the statistical authority but may remain registered in the OAED administrative register as unemployed in order to enjoy the benefits of being registered as unemployed with the OAED. «Consequently, the persons recorded as unemployed by ELSTAT do not coincide conceptually with those registered in the OAED administrative register and, therefore, due to the difference in definitions, it is not possible to match the two populations.».
Following this announcement, we searched for the questionnaire used in the Labor Force Sample Survey conducted by ELSTAT to estimate the number of unemployed people, as well as the latest press release distributed by ELSTAT, in the hope that it would shed some light on the methodology of the survey.
So, what we have found is that ELSTAT records as employed not only those who work illegally or in casual employment, but also those who have worked even for just one hour, even without pay, in a family business. Another factor that explains the low unemployment rates is that ELSTAT does not record as unemployed the tens of thousands of seasonal workers (because they do not look for work outside the season), nor the hundreds of thousands of people whose contracts are suspended, but registers them as part of the inactive population.
However, we were unable to reach a conclusion regarding the research methodology, as the explanations provided are unclear. In any case, anyone living in this country finds it impossible to believe that between August 2019 and October 2020, unemployment did not increase by even a single percentage point. Even if we take the example of undeclared domestic work, our own experience tells us that this has also been wiped out because there is no money. How is it possible for ELSTAT to calculate unemployment at 16.7%?;
