ATHENS, Greece — Greek unemployment rose to 10.3 percent in the fourth quarter of 2009, the country’s statistics agency said Thursday — the highest since 2005 and the largest jump in 11 years.
Unemployment had stood at 7.9 percent in the fourth quarter of the previous year, the statistics agency said. This quarter’s rate is the highest since the fourth quarter of 2004, when unemployment stood at 10.4 percent.
The figures come as Greece is under intense pressure from its European Union partners to reduce its massive budget deficit from 12.7 percent to 8.7 percent of gross domestic product. It has announced a tough austerity program slashing civil servants’ pay, freezing pensions and hiking taxes — measures which have led to a backlash from labor unions, who have responded with a series of strikes.
Taxi drivers and gas station owners were the latest to walk off the job, staging a 24-hour strike Thursday to protest an overhaul of tax laws that will force them, as well as kiosk owners and street fruit and vegetable vendors, to give customers receipts in an effort to fight tax evasion.
The center-left government is due later Thursday to finalize the proposed legislation, which will increase the burden on the rich, landowners and the powerful Orthodox Church.
The government has called on its EU partners for a firmer eurozone bailout plan to lift market pressure and lower its borrowing rates, which currently stand at about double those of Germany’s.
Prime Minister George Papandreou told a European Parliament Committee Thursday that failure of the EU to agree on a plan would force Greece to go to the International Monetary Fund for a financial rescue.
On Wednesday, government spokesman George Petalotis said the March 25-26 EU summit will be crucial, indicating a decision on whether to go to the IMF would depend on its outcome.
“I believe the summit is when it will become evident whether the European partners want to support a country … or whether we have to resort to some other solution,” Petalotis said.
