They also agreed to shorten the terms of collective bargaining agreements, freeze private sector salary increases until unemployment drops below 10 percent from its current 19 percent, loosen job protections in the public sector and by the end of 2015 cut 150,000 jobs from the government payroll of 800,000.

On Thursday evening, finance ministers from the euro zone countries said they were not yet ready to sign off on Greece’s agreement, demanding additional savings of up to $432 million in 2012. But they were expected to give their blessing, at least conditionally, financial experts said, because they do not want to jeopardize a broader deal in which private creditors are expected to agree to write down as much as 70 percent of their holdings of Greek debt.

The demand for additional cuts will require further austerity measures that will have to be pushed through Parliament in the coming days. They are expected to pass, nevertheless, and in spite of a growing number of lawmakers who say they will vote no — including the deputy labor minister, a member of the Socialist Party who resigned on Thursday to protest the deal.

The new cuts imposed by Greece’s so-called troika of foreign lenders — the European Commission, the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund — come at what some economists say is the worst possible time. The country’s economy shrank by 11.7 percent between 2009 and 2011 and is expected to contract a further 5 to 6 percent this year — even though the troika’s program is based on a return to growth in 2013.

During talks this week, Greece and its lenders had to readjust the program to compensate for a deeper recession than the three institutions had foreseen, which caused the country’s budget deficit to expand more than anticipated. This is precisely the vicious circle that many Greeks say could destroy their economy — and, ultimately, their society — in the absence of a strategy to promote growth.

“Their methods are theoretical and have nothing to do with reality,” Savas Robolis, the director of the Labor Institute of the General Confederation of Greek Workers, said of the troika. “We can’t keep creating deficits, then making cuts and then creating more deficits and more cuts.”