Joblessness rises in July, reversing downward trend; two-thirds are women

The number of officially unemployed people in Greece increased by 31,389 in July, interrupting a downward trend, the state employment agency OAED announced Tuesday.

This brings the number of registered unemployed to 970,201, of whom 534,528 or 55.09 percent are long-term, that is they have been jobless for at least a year.

Almost two-thirds of the unemployed (636,715 or 65.62 percent) are women.

Unemployment in Greece reached an all-time high of 27.9 percent in June 2013, but it had slowly improved to a nearly eight-year low of 17.6 percent by last April.