The Bank of Greece (BoG) has issued its interim monetary policy report on Wednesday, with the figures for the first six months of 2011 revealing the shocking truth of about 500,000 Greeks living in households that had no income at all because all family members were unemployed.
In the first six months of 2011, the percentage of households with all members being unemployed stood at 12.9%, while last year it was 9.8%.
In 2011 those working both in the private and public sector have suffered an average gross income decrease of 6.3% after a 9.1% decrease in 2010.
Statistics also show that gross incomes have dropped by 6.3 percent this year compared to 9.1 percent in 2010.
The situation is expected to continue into 2012 as the BoG provides that the labor cost per unit (i.e. the cost of operations for each product they produce) in the whole economy will decline further by 2.7%.
The Bank of Greece rings the alarm on the enhancing of structural unemployment, because the number of long-term unemployed (over one year in search of work) is steadily increasing. It also warns about the danger of simultaneous existence of high unemployment, empty job vacancies and inflation.
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