The onslaught of a new negative trend in still bailout-dependent Greece, what’s dubbed as the “working poor”, is the focus of a latest Der Spiegel article, namely, young adults with a tertiary education and qualifications but with income that only barely covers their monthly grocery bill.
The mass-circulation German magazine cites three examples of young Greeks struggling to make ends meet in a country shuffling through its third memorandum program – the third imposed by a “strange bedfellows” leftist-rightist coalition government elected on a populist andvirulently anti-bailout, anti-austerity platform.
One 24-year-old woman with college-level studies in languages and literature works as a barmaid, while a 27-year-old English language graduate works 25 hours a week but only gets paid 15. Another man, 30, with a degree in physical education, covers his bills on the meager pay of a fast food job, the magazine reports.
“A liberalization of the labor market brought about the exact opposite of what was intended … lawmakers reduced the minimum (monthly) salary to 586 euros, and at the same time allowed employers to go even further down when the job-seeker is under the age of 25. The intent of the measure was a hope that it would combat youth unemployment, which in 2016 reached 47 percent. At the same time, a new generation of wage-earners emerged, who are willing to do almost anything, knowing that if they didn’t, others would,” Der Spiegel reports.
