Unemployment at a E.U. record in Greece

In Greece, layoffs have been ruled out with unemployment at a European record of 27 per cent, as stated in a report by the Guardian.

The country was heading for a full-on collision with its international creditors on Sunday.

Representatives of the creditors: the EU, the International Monetary Fund and the European Central Bank discussed the situation in Greece.

Finance minister Yannis Stournaras said the public sector has shrunk by seventy-five thousand people in the last year and a half.

But still, he told a newspaper there would be no layoffs.

Stournaras has now come across hostility from within the government.

Athens agreed to cut one hundred and fifty thousand jobs from its public sector by 2015. 

That’s part of a wide-ranging package of improvements for the country.

But the conservative-led administration has faced growing pressure from its leftwing junior partners.

Leader of the Democratic Left Fotis Kouvellis said that with 1.4 million Greeks now unemployed, the thought of losing even more work could threaten the already fragile social peace.

Economists are calling the situation a “great depression” as Greece is projected to see unemployment pass thirty per cent by the end of the year.

Flickr Photo by: ines saraiva

STORY WRITTEN BY: KURT WEISS