A Non-Experimental Evaluation of Unemployment Risk in Crete and the Ionian Islands: Regional Evidence for Greece

Abstract

The basic aim of this paper is to investigate the impact that individuals´ level of education and participation in training programmes (apprenticeship, intra-firm training, continuing vocational training, popular training) have on their job prospects in Crete and the Ionian Islands, both among Greece´s top tourist destinations, during the implementation of the first Community Support Framework - CSF (1989-1993). We try to see whether the level of education itself and participation in training programmes increased the chances of finding a job. More specifically, we examine the social and demographic characteristics that increase the chances of someone in the examined population finding a job, how those chances change (if they do) after the introduction of training courses and, also, whether university graduates, in contrast to most of the rest of the EU member states, face greater difficulties in finding a job than non-university graduates, as a series of studies for Greece conclude. In our analysis we use individual anonymised records (micro-data) of the Labour Force Survey (LFS) for both employed and unemployed at NUTS-2 level.