Charts of the week
Import prices
Greece’s import prices appear to stabilise at the recent highs, moving up by just 0.4 pct year-on-year in January, from a rise of 11 pct in the previous month. This is the slowest rise since January 2021 when the index had contracted by 4.8 pct, with the following month of 2021 starting the current rising cycle that peaked in April last year with a rise of 39.1 pct. That said, in January 2022 the index had already started posting strong rises, up by 31.8 pct so there is a base effect in this year’s January movement.
Unemployment
There was a slight uptick in the non-seasonally adjusted quarterly unemployment in Q4 2022, rising to 11.9 pct, from 13.2 pct in the same quarter of 2021, and 11.6 pct in Q3 2022. The unemployed are hovering around the half million mark, though their numbers posted a notable 9.6 pct drop year-on-year. Employment only posted a marginal quarterly rise of 1.9 pct from Q3, still above 4.1 million workers.
