Greek Unemployment Reaches 26.8%

You know the driving forces here. A perpetual recession, cuts from austerity, higher taxes, terms of an international bailout and on and on. The long and short of the matter is that Greek business is not yet back in business, as this is record unemployment.

Another key issue is that more than half of the unemployed are considered to be long-term unemployed, making them less attractive and less qualified for the few jobs that do open. The young also are hard hit here, as those between 15 and 24 years of age are still facing well over 50% unemployment, although this rate appears to have dropped to 58.3% from 64.2%.

It was just yesterday that the International Monetary Fund admitted notable failures during the Greek bailout. We have yet to see any clear direction for Thursday trading in the ETF shares of the Global X FTSE Greece 20 ETF (NYSEMKT: GREK). ADRs for the National Bank of Greece SA (NYSE: NBG) are lower by more than 2.5% to $5.89 so far in early New York trading, although this may be in part tied to woes in Turkey affecting its banking operations there.