‘Going under-employed’: Industrial and regional effects, specialization and part-time work across recession-hit Southern European Union regions

Abstract

The paper explores the regional dimensions of under-employment by analysing the uneven dispersion of part-time jobs in Greece. It understands under-employment as an integral dimension of contemporary flexible labour trends, triggered by devaluation and expanding amid crisis, although in diverse geographical and sectoral terms. It follows a methodology that comparatively analyses statistical data, relevant secondary sources and previous case studies, before moving to a theoretical contextualization of the findings. Based on this framework, NUTS-II level total employment and part-time work data are analysed through location quotients, and a new embellishment of shift-share analysis is implemented for 2005–2008 and 2009–2012 across nine sectors. The findings reveal four distinct, although porous, patterns of under-employment that are distinguished according to different regional productive specializations and the impact of structural or regional effects. The reasons why some regional economies, such as the tourist ones, were more resistant to employment losses, and at the same time the most keen on expanding part-time work, are scrutinized. Concluding, three deeper causal mechanisms, namely productive-technological, organizational and institutional, that determine the under-employment patterns revealed, are discussed and contrasted to relevant literature findings.

Inter-regional underemployment and the industrial reserve army: Precarity as a contemporary Greek drama

“…Flexible labour is that which exhibits malleability in some aspect: working time, contract duration, place of work or perhaps employment relationships (e.g., subcontracting), sometimes at the behest of the worker. Labour precarity differs considerably, as it describes workers who either lack security or are in danger of falling into this condition in the near future (Gialis et al, 2018). Consequently, not all flexibly employed workers are precarious (characteristic exceptions are highly skilled freelancers).…”

“…In the case of Greece, workers have been acutely affected by the crisis and its aftermath, for several reasons. For one, whilst the 2001 adoption of the euro gave the government easier access to international financing, it also exposed the country's weak industrial sectors to fierce international competition because the government could no longer manipulate exchange rates to protect them (Hadjimichalis, 2011), driving many inefficient producers out of business, especially post-2008 (Gialis et al, 2018). At the same time, whereas government spending kept increasing in recent decades to a point where, in 2009, it amounted to over 50% of gross domestic product (GDP), the lack of effective mechanisms to counter tax evasion meant that revenue collection lagged, creating a fiscal crisis for the state (Palaskas et al, 2015).…”

Dismantled Spatial Fixes in the Aftermath of Recession: Capital Switching and Labour Underutilization in the Greek Capital Metropolitan Region

“…Ultimately, figures for Attica indicate that it is generally more vulnerable than the other Greek regions, despite it being the main metropolitan region. The decisive factors that determine levels of unemployment are structural and in one way or another related to idle capital and internal production and labour devaluation (Gialis et al ., ). The only sectors where job loss figures seem lower than average are commerce, transportation and communications, and public administration, health care and education (the latter being heavily funded by the state).…”

Labour in changing urban landscapes

“…Nevertheless, sectoral imbalances were apparent, as employment figures in manufacturing were receding even without the pressure of an (incoming) economic crisis (Gourzis et al, 2018). Eventually, the dominance of urbanization over industrialization ended abruptly in 2007, as the housing bubble created throughout the 2000s went bust.…”

“…In order to address the third Research Question and the impact of wider scales upon urban localities, three mechanisms which operate across all Greek regions to some extent were identified in Chapter 3 and revisited in Chapter 4. The capital metropolitan region, embodying the regional unevenness of the Greek socioeconomic formation better than any other geographical entity, functioned as a mirror reflecting their impact at the local scale more vividly than the rest Greek regions (Gourzis et al, 2018).…”