In the wake of the economic crisis, it is estimated that over 600,000 Greeks have left the country between 2010 and 2021, writes Financial Times.
Homesickness made research assistant Christos Gkolfos move back to Greece after ten years in Sweden. He could then continue to work for the same company in healthcare research and keep his salary from Sweden. He says that Greece's infrastructure still "has a long way to go", but that he, after eight months of paperwork and a lot of help, got the tax breaks that the Greek state offers to those who move home.
Now that everything is clear, I am in a better environment. My private life, my career and my income are in the best condition I can think of.
Looking for labor
SEB's euro economist Pia Fromlet says that it is a combination of a strong service sector and demographic development that has reduced unemployment in Greece. Like many countries on the continent, Greece has a worse demographic development than Sweden, where a higher proportion of the population is older. At the same time, the growing service sector is a large part of Greece's economy.
There has been a labor shortage in certain sectors. One has begun to see that "here we have a shortage of labor" and it comes here and now.
Greece has also, contrary to many other countries, opened up for six-day weeks for certain sectors. This includes, among other things, retail.
The shortage of labor in the service sector has been very large.
Low wages
Near the bottom of Europe's wage list, the country has a hard time getting back its former population. Instead, the country is luring with significant tax breaks for those who return. For example, those who return can get halved taxes for the first seven years.
We tell people: Come back, the Greek economy is not what you remember it, it's doing well, says Spiros Protopsaltis, who is the head of the Greek employment agency Dypa to the British The Guardian.
The average annual salary in Greece was around 17,000 euros in 2023, equivalent to around 190,000 Swedish kronor, according to Eurostat's data. According to the same data, the Swedish annual salary was on average 491,000 kronor, while the average for EU countries was around 423,000 kronor.
Last year, Greece's labor and social insurance minister Niki Kerameus toured the world to attract labor back. She tells Financial Times that it has been difficult to get a response.
They look at us as representatives of the state that pushed them away. And the challenge is even greater: to show them that today's Greece has nothing to do with Greece from 2010 or 2012.
