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During 2004-2009, employment in the public sector increased by 100.000 people

No. The number is supposedly +58.000 (16.000 of those were in 2008 for obvious reasons, 12.000 in 2004 - an Olympic year...). In early 2010 a detailed census of public sector employees found them to be ~768.000 - that's about 15% of the work force, not a high number by OECD or EU standards.
Public salaries rising by 60% in 4 years is a joke. Just to give you an idea: over the same period public sector wages as a percentage of GDP were pretty much steady despite the rise in public employee numbers.

So the public sector's extent was not the cause of the "fiscal disaster". Lagging revenue was. And the decile where the lagging was humongous was the top decile...

An aside:

I'm thinking of posting a diary with a title like "10 fairy tales about the Greek economy" debunking the poppycock that "serious" news sites (not to mention economists) are propagating regarding the data before the crisis... is that the sort of thing we all have in mind that ET reports are about?

The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom - William Blake

by talos (mihalis at gmail dot com) on Sat Jun 18th, 2011 at 06:21:01 PM EST
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