Is Greece’s Child Labor Crisis Getting Out of Hand? by Kristina Chew

About 100,000 children may be working illegally in Greece, according to an estimate from child protection groups and the Greek ombudsman, reports the Greek daily Ekathimerini. The speculation is yet another sign of how Greece’s economic crisis  (Greece is in its sixth year of recession and almost 10 percent of children live in a household in which not even one family member has a job) continues to take a huge toll on all sectors of Greek society.
The actual number of children working illegally — whose parents are unemployed and/or who are Roma or migrants and often without any health coverage — can only be estimated. Most of the work child laborers do is undocumented and therefore very likely to consist of low pay, unsafe and substandard conditions. For example, children working on farms in rural areas are being exposed to agricultural chemicals. Child victims of trafficking or forced labor typically work illegally, so they are not included in labor statistics.
The rise in illegal child labor is occurring at a time when Greeks have faced record-high levels of unemployment. For Greeks under age 25, the unemployment rate is 59.2 percent. The country’s overall unemployment rate was 26.8 percent in March. “Unprecedented” numbers of younger Greeks — more than 120,000 recently qualified doctors, engineers, IT professionals and scientists, half with graduate degrees – have been emigrating to Germany, Australia and other countries in search of work. Those who have

Child labor a rising concern in crisis-hit Greece

By Matthaios Tsimitakis
Though no clear, official figures are available, child protection groups and the Greek Ombudsman estimate that up to 100,000 children have been forced into the illegal labor market since the start of the crisis. The figure does not include minors who are victims of trafficking, traffic light children or youngsters who are victims of criminal gangs or their own families, but, rather, social groups that have become marginalized by the crisis, such as families where the parents are unemployed, Roma, migrants etc.
There is no hard data regarding child labor in Greece as in most cases it concerns undocumented work, so estimates are based on information compiled from different sources. According to the Labor Inspectorate, just 562 minors were registered for legal work in 2012, while in its manpower study for the last quarter of 2012, the Hellenic Statistical Authority estimated child workers as numbering 6,238.
The European statistical authority Eurostat, meanwhile, reports that 11.4 percent of the student population dropped out of school in 2012, meaning that some 70,000 children left secondary school, raising serious concerns among child protection groups.
Furthermore, the International Labor Organization (ILO) reports that some 139,000 young people aged 15-24 were not in school or employed in 2009, suggesting that at least a percentage of them had been absorbed by the illegal labor market. That number climbed to 161,900 in 2010, according to the ILO. As far as teenagers aged 15-19 are concerned, the ILO recorded that there were 31,400 in employment in 2009 and 25,700 in 2010. The number of unemployed young people aged up to 19 was reported to be 14,200 in