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Employment is pivotal to strengthening Greece's economic recovery, increasing social welfare and redressing poverty. Jobs are returning, making inroads into high unemployment, but their wages and skill levels are lower than many that were lost during the crisis. Greece's hiring is benefiting from more flexible arrangements. Legislative amendments can maintain this flexibility, ensure wages align with productivity and better protect individuals from labour market risks. Ensuring that workers possess skills that match employers' needs will sustain employment and productivity growth. Improving the education system is a long-term mission and involves raising its pedagogical strength and orientation towards professional needs. A social welfare system dominated by pensions has not been able to prevent a steep hike in poverty among children and the young, risking long-term harm to well-being. Pursuing recent steps towards a better targeted social protection, accompanied by support programmes for jobseekers, will provide a reliable safety net and reduce poverty.

This paper presents priority actions to achieve the complementary objectives of: (1) supporting household incomes through more jobs, as the best means of addressing poverty and improving inclusiveness; (2) ensuring that labour market arrangements for determining work conditions support social dialogue and sustainably improve employment and incomes; (3) quality education that provides individuals with the skills required to realise their potential and to raise their employability, productivity and wages; and (4) protecting households and especially children from income shocks and the risk of poverty through a comprehensive social safety net, combined with effective active labour market programmes.

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