© Reuters/Panagiotis Tzamaros
Lambrousi Harikleia, an employee of the Workers Housing Organisation threatens to jump from the office where she worked because her wage has been cut and she and her husband were threatened with layoffs, in Athens February 15, 2012.
Athens - Greek unemployment hit another record high in December and for the first time the number of young people without a job outnumbered those in work.
Statistics service ELSTAT said on Thursday that the overall jobless rate rose to 21 percent from 20.9 percent in November, twice the euro zone rate.
The average unemployment rate for 2011 jumped to 17.3 percent from 12.5 percent in the previous year, according to the figures, which are not adjusted for seasonal factors.
Youth were particularly hit. For the first time on record, more people between 15-24 years were without a job than with one. Unemployment in that age group rose to 51.1 percent, twice as high as three years ago.
Budget cuts imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as a condition for saving the debt-laden country from a chaotic default have caused a wave of corporate closures and bankruptcies.
Greece's economy is estimated to have shrunk by a about a fifth since 2008, when it plunged into its deepest and longest post-war recession. About 600,000 jobs, more than one in ten, have been destroyed in the process.
Comment: Watch out! This is what Libya was organising for Africa when NATO bombed it back to the stone age: