Greece's Convergence to EU Standards: Is It Feasible for Greece to Attain an Unemployment Rate Below 10%?

Given the theory of efficient unemployment and using Eurostat data, it turns out that the average annual unemployment in Greece over the last -at least- 15 years has been consistently below 10% when job vacancies are considered. Given that based on cumulative data for the period 2010-2022 job vacancies are estimated to be between 98 thousand and 123 thousand, we argue that an appropriate indicator for the degree of slackness/tightness of the Greek labor market should combine both unemployed persons and job vacancies. That is, the u* indicator of the full-employment rate of unemployment (FERU). Our analysis shows that if the positive trends of the declining unemployment rate and increasing job vacancy rate continue, a full-employment state could be reached even in the next 3.5 years converging to EU standards.