The  paper  examines  the  2001  inter-municipal  travel-to-work  flows  of  Greece  and delineates  the  country’s  labor  market  areas  (LMAs)  on  the  basis  of  the  15% commuting threshold. It finds that the LMAs of Athens (3.9 million inhabitants) and Thessaloniki  (1.1 million)  exceed  the homonymous  urban  planning  complexes by 8 and 15  times,  respectively.  These  LMAs  along  with  the  LMAs  of  Patras  (245 thousand)  and  Iraklion  (233  thousand)  host  about  half  of  the  country’s  total population.  Another  thirty-eight  clusters  of  municipalities  and  eight  self-contained municipalities  of 20-184  thousand  inhabitants  jointly host a quarter  of  the country’s population.  The  picture  is  complemented  by  the  presence  of  ten  clusters  of municipalities and  607  self-contained municipalities with  smaller populations. Their dispersal  resembles  the  contours  of  the  country’s  idiosyncratic  terrain  and  deviates from  the  13  regional  and  54  sub-regional  administrative  divisions  employed  by  the national  and  EU  authorities  in  order  to  engage  in  economic  development interventions. This suggests that the employment, unemployment and social cohesion policy-initiatives have to be re-focused accordingly.

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