LABOUR MARKET FAIL

LOLers rejoice!

The first Labour Force Survey of our post-sovereign era is out, and it's a real gem.

I can spend all day pondering how come so many Greeks suddenly went into farming, or how come we can afford so many more maids when the country is going to the dogs. But my basic question is this:

If we're not about to default, how come international quango jobs are up 20% in a single year?

See for yourselves:

Every Greek taxi driver worth his/her salt knows a veritable army of Ph.D.s who aren't working, or worse, are also taxi drivers. Coffee circles and book clubs full of Greek dinner ladies in their 60s shake their heads in sympathy on a daily basis.

Only now what we all used to bullshit about is actually true. A Master's degree is less likely to get you a job in Greece than a Bachelor's.

Of course, the ones that have suffered the most in this new labour market have been women with an incomplete elementary education, men with no schooling or who only made it to junior high, and women with one of those rubbish "higher" education vocational diplomas. But graduates probably never saw this coming.

It gets even more absurd if you're a woman. Women with no schooling are actually doing better in the recession than they did before - and, for the first time, a woman has to get a degree in order to do better in the labour market than one of her completely unschooled sisters, who don't minding scrubbing the odd floor.

At least, one might think, the share of workshy bastards with job offers who decided to stay on the dole or keep scrounging off mom and dad is down  - they are now only 8.9% of the unemployed. But due to the rise in unemployment, there's a few more of them - 52,000 of them in fact, up from 51,400.