Precarious employment in Greece: economic crisis, labour market flexibilisation, and vulnerable workers

The discourse on precarious employment has been growing over the last few years, particularly due to the recent financial crisis. Flexible forms of work, such as part-time or temporary, traditionally seen as a way for boosting employment, have now given way to a new form of work, the so-called precarious employment. Greece has been the European country mostly hit by the economic crisis and the levels of unemployment during the past decade have reached unprecedented levels. Nevertheless, the official levels of unemployment only tell a part of the story. Thousands of workers have been “forced” to accept jobs in positions that would not be their first choice, thus masking the real extent of the problem. This paper utilises data from the Labour Force Survey from both before and during the economic crisis in order to investigate different aspects of precarious employment and how these have been intensified. Ten measures of precarious employment are constructed covering six areas including a) contractual precariousness, b) unsociable hours precariousness c) institutional context precariousness d) income precariousness, e) insecurity precariousness and f) working conditions precariousness. The evolution and intensification of aspects of precarious employment is investigated at a country as well as regional level and across various groups of workers. The findings of the study point towards a continuous deterioration of the employment relationship with impacts on both the structures of the economy and targeted towards specific groups of workers.