The jobless rate rose to 24.4 percent from a revised 23.5 percent in the previous month, statistics service ELSTAT said on Thursday.
 
The Greek jobless rate is now just a fraction behind the level in fellow euro zone sufferer Spain, whose unemployment rate for the three months to June stood at 24.6 percent, according to Madrid's official figures.
 
A total of 1.2 million Greeks were without work in June, up 42 percent from the same month last year.
 
Budget cuts imposed by the European Union and the International Monetary Fund as a condition for saving the debt-laden country from a chaotic default have aggravated a wave of corporate closures and bankruptcies.
 
Credit to companies has been shrinking as the country's banks depend on the ECB for liquidity and cannot fund firms.
 
The impact has been felt hardest on those aged between 15-24 years. Unemployment in that age group stood at 55 percent, compared with 20 percent in 2008, when Greece's recession began.
 
Greece's economy is estimated to have shrunk by about a fifth since then. More than 600,000 jobs, more than one in 10, have been destroyed in the process.
 
The slump is expected to accelerate later this year if the government implements further budget cuts of almost 12 billion euros over the next two years as a pre-condition for more funds under its EU/IMF bailout."

See also Greek Government and Public at Odds Over New Cuts for a good discussion of the tension between citizens and their government officials when enough people finally realize that the emperor has no clothes and that their government can't protect them either from other governments or from themselves. Talk about being between a rock and a hard place:

"Prime Minister Antonis Samaras has been scrambling to seal a deal with his coalition government for fresh cuts to pensions, salaries and other expenses before Greece’s so-called troika of international lenders returns to Athens on Friday to inspect his progress. The country’s next installment of bailout money will depend on his getting a passing grade.
 
But on the streets of Athens, there is a sense that this latest effort to placate Greece’s lenders may be a last straw for the public.
 
After two-and-a-half years of wrenching austerity, “they will not be able to get more money from us than they already have,” Mrs. Kastaniotou, 44, said as her three teenage daughters and husband nodded in agreement. “Mark my words,” she added. “In the coming months, there will be a revolution, and this government will fall.” "
 
Summing Up 
 
Too much debt puts the lenders in charge and not the government knows best gang. The lenders have money; the government has none.

As government's debt and other debts are unable to be properly serviced, lenders stop lending, layoffs and spending cutbacks occur, and the economy weakens further. The rate of unemployment rises. It becomes a vicous spiral downward. People look to government to help, but government can't help.
 
People finally come to understand that government has no money. It can provide no security. Only people who have money can do that, such as lenders. And they'll insist on being repaid with interest. If the borrower can't make those payments, no new money will be loaned.
 
In the U.S. we're now at $16 trillion in national debt and counting. Of course, that's not counting the other ~$100 trillion in unfunded entitlement promises that we've made to ourselves, or perhaps better said, we've made on behalf of our kids and grandkids.
 
The era of big government, while not yet over, certainly needs to end.
 
Thanks. Bob.