Once upon a time, in the 1960s and 1970s Greece, having a career in the public sector was every parent’s wet dream for their offspring. Long before private sector development and elevated wages in an open market environment, the Greek public sector offered permanency, stability and an undisturbed rise in the hierarchy, not to mention a steady pension. The demand for public sector positions came to a frenzy in the early 1980s, when socialist PM Andreas Papandreou was offering politically appointed public positions left and right.
As a result, there was a growing sentiment that half of the country’s working force was either working as, or on its way to becoming, a public employee. In this sense, census results just released from the ministry of Administrative Reform might come as a surprise to many.
According to it, the total number of public employees in the country today is 597,259. That includes all positions in public and municipal administration, the judiciary, health services and policing. The census categorizes them according to sex, age and education status. Interestingly enough, the higher the diplomas, the more women one can find in the public sector. On the other hand, among lower education employees, men are the majority.
There are more educated females in the public sector than men, which is one exception to the standard chauvinistic rule in all Greek market
In the 30 to 39 years of age with university education bracket, there are 28,536 female employees, compared to 12,043 male ones. That means a ratio of more than 2 to 1 for female public employees. In the same bracket for municipal employees, the ratio is almost the same, with 2,385 female and 1,002 male employees.
When it comes to the lower education bracket (employees with just a school degree), the ratio is exactly the opposite: You get 22,081 male employees and merely 9,689 female ones in the country’s ministry services. Moving on to other special educational skills, we find 138,888 employees with an English language degree, 117,183 with English language skills and an additional computer word processing degree and 34,087 employees with all of the above and an additional PhD. Finally, the number of National Health Service doctors is 1,578, while the number of policing Special Guards is 3,511.
Breaking down the figures one can come to a few interesting deductions. For one thing, there are more educated females in the public sector than men, which is one exception to the standard chauvinistic rule in all Greek market. For another, one struggles to grasp the fact that the public sector employs more policing forces than doctors. It’s one thing to say Greeks are notorious troublemakers in need of policing and another to assume their health is worth less than their police supervision.
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