Greece’s labor market is failing to make use of the skills and qualifications its workers already have, according to a sweeping new study by INE GSEE, the Labour Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers, the country’s largest trade union body.

The survey, described as the largest nationwide workforce study ever conducted in Greece, examined skill levels, mismatches, surpluses, and deficits among private-sector employees. Its findings present a picture of a labor market in which the problem is not simply that workers lack the right skills, but that the economy is not structured to use the skills workers already possess.

A Mismatch at the Core

The survey’s most striking finding is the scale of the disconnect between what workers studied and what they actually do. Some 42.6% of respondents said their field of study or qualifications was little or not at all related to their current job. Only 44.2% reported a strong or very strong connection between their educational background and their work.

The mismatch is sharpest among workers in precarious employment. Nearly three in four employees on rotating or zero-hours contracts, 72.9%, said their qualifications had little or no relevance to their job. Among part-time workers, that figure stood at 66.2%.

The link between educational fit and job performance is also clear in the data. Among workers who said they met their job requirements to a very high degree, more than half, 55.4%, reported a strong match between their qualifications and their role. Among those who reported low performance, nine in ten said their qualifications bore little or no relation to their work.

Overqualified, Not Underperforming

Despite the mismatches, workers do not see themselves as incompetent. Almost nine in ten respondents, 88.8%, said they meet their job requirements to a high or very high degree. Three in four, 74.6%, said they fully or largely make use of their skills and knowledge in their current role.

Nearly three in ten workers, 29%, said they are overqualified for their position. When asked why, 39% said they had simply needed to find work quickly, even if the role was below their level. Some 20.8% chose their position for job security, while 20.4% said there were simply too few openings in their area of specialization.

Only 3.6% of workers considered themselves underqualified for their position. Of those, nearly half, 47.9%, attributed the gap to limited work experience, while 18.3% pointed to a shortage of adequate training programs, and 10.8% linked the problem to technological changes making work more demanding.

Training Gaps

Participation in ongoing professional training remains low. Nearly three in four private-sector workers, 74.5%, said they had not taken part in any professional training or upskilling program in the past year.

Access to training is starkly unequal. Among workers with a master’s degree, 41.4% had participated in training in the past year. Among those who completed only lower secondary school, the rate fell to 10.5%, and to 12.3% among primary school graduates. The pattern holds for income: participation among workers earning between 1,501 and 2,000 euros per month reached 35.2%, compared to roughly 20% among those earning between 251 and 750 euros.

The survey also found that formal education and prior work experience remain the most applied sources of knowledge on the job, with roughly 75% of workers drawing heavily or moderately on both. Training programs, by contrast, ranked significantly lower: just over half of workers, 55.1%, said they applied knowledge from seminars or training courses to a high or moderate degree. The report flags this as a possible indicator of quality problems in how such programs are designed and delivered.

Employer support for training is present but uneven. Just over half of workers, 57.1%, said their employer supported ongoing professional development. But more than one in three, 36%, said their employer did not. Support is strongly correlated with company size: only 46.2% of workers at micro-businesses, those with up to nine employees, reported employer backing, compared to 69.8% at large firms with 250 or more staff.

Digital Skills Top the Wish List

Asked what skills they most want to develop, workers ranked digital skills first, with 48.6% citing them as a priority. Social and emotional skills came second at 27.9%, followed by cognitive skills at 24.2%, managerial and organizational skills at 21.4%, and technical skills at 20.6%.

Despite the intense public debate about artificial intelligence and automation, only about one in four workers, 24.1%, considered it likely or very likely that some of their job-relevant skills would become obsolete within the next five years. Nearly half, 46.6%, said such a development was unlikely or very unlikely.

A Structural Problem

INE GSEE draws a pointed conclusion from the data: the skills conversation in Greece is being framed too narrowly. Upskilling cannot be treated as a matter of individual responsibility, the report argues, when the deeper problem lies in how jobs are organized, how businesses use the human capital available to them, and what kind of productive economy Greece is building.

The institute calls for a more coherent policy framework, one that ties continuous professional training to the actual needs of workers, businesses, and sectors, strengthens employer participation, and rests on stable mechanisms of social dialogue. Skills upgrading, the report concludes, only becomes meaningful when linked to higher-quality jobs, productive restructuring, and a more resilient and equitable development model for the Greek economy.