The price of the first year of the pandemic was heavy on their trade enterprises who are active in the largest sectors of economic activity, but also for employment, mainly Work with paymentas at least follows from a comparison of his data Greek Statistical Office for the business structure in 2019 and 2020. While some sectors, such as organized food retail (supermarkets) for example, benefited in the first year of the pandemic, resulting in an increase in turnover of about 10%, as well as a significant increase in employment, the overall impact of the coronavirus on the size of enterprises, turnover which lost more than 28 billion euros, is significantly negative. At the same time, although there was a beneficial measure to suspend the employment contract, in 2020 there were 168,834 lower paid jobs in companies located in Greece compared to 2019. It is clarified that in this ELSTAT data on the structure of companies, all sectors of economic activity are included, except for agriculture and domestic services. It includes, in other words, trade, industry, construction and part of the service sector.

Since the summer of 2021, there has been a significant recovery in economic activity, which continues this year at an even faster pace. However, it remains to be seen whether the inflationary pressures that were not caused, but increased after Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the resulting decline in consumption, will ultimately hit business and employment more than the pandemic left behind.

In particular, in 2020, the turnover of enterprises amounted to about 238.14 billion euros compared to 266.45 billion euros in 2019, a decrease of 10.62%. The number of employees decreased by 5.18% or by 137,230 people, while the number of employed people decreased in 2020 in comparison with 2019 by 8.52% or by 168,834 people. The value of production decreased by 12.89%, while gross value added decreased in 2020 compared to 2019 by 7.82%, or about 4 billion euros.

The cost of production for 2020 decreased by 12.89% compared to 2019.

The figures also show a slight decline in the number of businesses in 2020 of 6,564 or 0.91%. However, among the main sectors, the largest percentage decline in the number of enterprises is demonstrated by the hotel and restaurant business. The number of enterprises decreased in 2020 by 4.62%, while in the field of trade, retail and wholesale trade, the decrease was 2.31%, and in the manufacturing industry – 1.71%.

The sectors with the largest number of businesses in 2020 were wholesale and retail with 221,926 businesses, accounting for 31.2% of all the above businesses, the professional, scientific and technical services sector with 140,336 businesses, accounting for 19.7%, followed by accommodation and catering services with 104,170 businesses, accounting for 14.6% of the total. In relation to the total turnover registered by enterprises in 2020, the largest share in absolute terms was occupied by the wholesale and retail sector with a share of 46.9% and 111.7 billion euros, followed by the production and supply of electricity, natural gas, steam. and air conditioning with percentages of 22.3% and 6.2% and absolute figures of 53.2 billion euros and 14.8 billion euros, respectively.

The trading sector remained the largest employer, employing 747,016 people or 29.8% of the total, of which 521,190 people were on wages. This is followed by the accommodation and catering services sector with 535,127 employees and the manufacturing sector with 348,393 employees.