Informal labour sector at 500,000 workers in 2010

Greece’s informal job market totals more than 500,000 employees, according to a report by the labour supervisor force, published on Tuesday.

The report, based on the findings of inspections made on 27,538 enterprises – accounting for 3.0 pct of total enterprises in the country – with a workforce of 77,666, showed that 19,435 workers are not registered in special labour books.

The report also said that 6,687 or 31.54 pct of non-registered workers are foreign nationals, and 12,748 or 22.58 pct are Greek citizens.

The Attica region (26.29 pct), eastern Macedonia-Thrace (36.25 pct), Thessaly (24.66 pct), Epirus (19.21 pct) and Crete (17.21 pct) recorded the highest informal job market rates in the country. Supervisors imposed fines totaling 9,368,500 euros on enterprises judged to have breached labour laws.

“Our main goal is to create a new, more flexible and strong mechanism with the aim to coordinate inspections of the labour market and social insurance, and to aggressively deal with the phenomenon of non-registered labour,” Mihalis Halaris, special secretary of the Labour Supervisor Force told ANA-MPA.