Tourism, F&B Sectors Creating Jobs in Greece

Photo: GTP

Greece’s resilient tourism sector is supporting job creation with the balance of employment in April marking a 20-year record, according to the Greek Labor Ministry’s Ergani employment system.

More specifically, at total of 297,918 recruitments were announced in April – six in 10 of these jobs concerned full time contracts – and 173,553 departures of which 83,550 voluntary departures and 90,003 due to termination of contracts.

In April the balance of employment flows remained positive by 124,365 jobs and overall, the January-April period was the third best performance since 2001 despite Covid-19 measures.

Photo: Shutterstock

Over the January-April period, 789,235 new recruitments were announced and 641,112 departures, 337,946 of which due to contract termination and  303,166 to voluntary departure.

The improvement, said the labor ministry, was mainly due to the increase in calls for employment in the hospitality and food & beverages sectors, which showed a positive balance of 61,575 and 34,647 positions, respectively. Indicatively, the two segments accounted for 157,854 recruitments in April.

In terms of area of specialization: waiters, chefs, service professionals, bartenders, hotel and restaurant cooks, and hotel housekeeping employees, cashiers, and receptionists accounted for the majority of new job openings.

In terms of location, regions with the strongest inbound tourism traffic accounted for most of the new recruitments: the South Aegean Region (41,314), Crete (30,228), and the Ionian islands (14,364).

“Greek tourism is the driver of new jobs…. 124,365 were created mainly due to the dynamics of tourism,” said Tourism Minister Vassilis Kikilias commenting on the news via his twitter account.

It should be noted, that actions are currently being taken to cover extensive staff shortages at tourism-related businesses which appear to be the result of poor working conditions as cited by Panhellenic Federation of Catering and Tourist Industry Employees (POEET) president last month. There are currently some 50,000 jobs still open ahead of the tourism season launch.