The social impact and risks of the COVID-19 pandemic crisis in Greece

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on unemployment in Greece. The outbreak of the pandemic at the beginning of 2020 was an unprecedented phenomenon for the governments of all states, which, with the increase in cases, were called to take measures to limit the spread of the virus, which necessarily limited freedoms but also caused changes in lifestyle and the activities of people but also in the operation of businesses resulting in the disruption of labor relations (Francis-Devine et al., 2022). A large percentage of businesses were forced to suspend their operations and, in many countries, total lockdowns of short or longer duration were imposed. Some countries, of course, have chosen to act differently by imposing smaller local lockdowns or even none. In this paper, we will deal with the case of Greece, which acted completely differently, especially during the first period of the outbreak of the pandemic, with the first imposing a total lockdown from the appearance of the very first cases of the pandemic (Goniewicz et al., 2020). Using panel data, we will assess the interaction and correlation of the unemployment rate with a range of variables, such as the number of cases, inflation, gross domestic product (GDP) and consumer price index, to assess whether and to what extent the spread of the virus ultimately affected the rate of unemployment in these two countries.