Employed people in Greece worked 39.6 hours a week on average in 2025, against 35.9 across the EU, Eurostat data cited by GreekReporter show. Even so, Eurostat reported on 7 October that 27.3 per cent of Greeks could not afford regular leisure, more than double the EU average of 12.1 per cent. It was the second year running that Greece ranked worst in the EU.
Jobs Moved Into Cafés and Hotels
A paper from the LSE’s Hellenic Observatory, by Michalis Nikiforos and colleagues, traces Greece’s recovery from austerity and calls the result a “café economy”. Employment in accommodation and food services rose 87 per cent between 2009 and 2023, while its output grew only 11 per cent. It is now Greece’s largest employer, and the authors say the shift of workers into it explains about a third of the fall in national productivity.
Labour productivity across the whole economy was 16 per cent below its 2009 level, and in hotels and restaurants it was about 40 per cent lower. Tourism did help the balance of payments, with the travel-services surplus up five percentage points, about half the cut in the current-account deficit. Hospitality therefore created jobs and brought in foreign money, but it did not make each hour of work more valuable.
Pay Did Not Follow the Jobs
FYI reported that the study found real wages fell by 26 to 35 per cent across the economy, and by as much as 60 per cent in tourism. About 86 per cent of tourism workers are overeducated for their jobs, so the sector absorbs skills it does not pay for. The authors link the falls to weak demand and wage pressure after austerity, not to cafés alone.
Eurostat figures show the result at home: after adjusting for prices, the typical Greek disposable income was about 60 per cent of the EU median in 2025. And 35 per cent of Greeks said their household made ends meet with great difficulty, against 6.4 per cent across the EU. That is how a country can have more jobs and less spending power.
Leisure Costs More Than Pay Allows
Eurostat defines leisure as paid activities outside the home, such as sport, cinema and concerts. Euronews’ analysis found that about 46 million people in the EU could not afford them in 2025, from 3.9 per cent in Croatia to 27.3 per cent in Greece. Across the EU, people below the poverty line were more than three times as likely to miss out as those above it.
The data have limits, since Euronews found only a weak link between income inequality and leisure affordability, so survey answers and local habits also play a part. Even so, low pay, long hours and high rents point the same way, GreekReporter noted. The paper’s answer is more high-productivity industry, innovation and fairer pay, not the end of tourism. A recovery that fills every table but leaves more than one in four residents unable to sit at one is unfinished.
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