Sándor Czomba: 30-40 thousand people will be missing from the Hungarian labour market every year
More than 4 million 600 thousand people are currently working in Hungary, so employment is practically full, according to the Minister of State for Employment Policy of the Ministry of National Economy. Sándor Czomba said on the M1 current affairs channel's Ma reggel programme on Tuesday that the government is trying to reach out to inactive people in all social strata to get them into work. He added that in the past two weeks he had visited several companies, mainly in the automotive sector, which reported labour shortages, especially in the fields of engineers, technicians and blue-collar workers.
The State Secretary said that compared to the same period last year, the number of employed persons in Hungary has decreased by 32 thousand this year, with the largest decreases in the manufacturing and construction industries, MTI reports.
He noted that this shortfall could not be compensated for by the tens of thousands of new jobs created in education and health
.in the 15-74 age group compared to the same period last year. Based on this trend, 30-40 thousand people will be absent from the Hungarian labour market every year in the coming years due to demographic problems alone, he said.
Sándor Czomba stressed that it is no coincidence that the government is focusing on helping families, because, he said, if this trend is not stopped, Hungary will face very serious problems in the coming years. He added that in the case of the inactive, the biggest challenge is to find them, because they are not in the labour register, but there could be in the order of 50-70,000 of them.
The politician said that the constant movement of the labour market requires new skills, and that full-time and adult education courses, among others, can help to acquire them. On part-time employment, he said that this form of employment has grown in Hungary in recent years, but not by transforming full-time employment, but by the entry of new players.
The State Secretary also spoke about regional differences, saying that the labour market situation in the North-Hungarian and North Great Plain regions is completely different and, although much better than 15 years ago, there is still work to be done there. As he said, "the most important piece of information is that we have finally managed to get jobs to where the many working hands are available.
He added that the mobility of Hungarians \"is close to zero and the government should take note of this and move jobs to where they are within reach of workers for the foreseeable future. He also there are about 300,000 people still in the country trying to get a job, and he called helping them one of the most important tasks for the next period.
Sándor Czomba also made an interview on Kossuth Radio's Jó reggelt Magyarország! programme, and spoke about Ukraine's possible accession to the EU by 2030. He said that the kind of workers that would come from Ukraine in the event of accession would not fill the gap, but would squeeze Hungarians out of jobs.
He stressed that the Hungarian government's firm goal is to help Hungarian workers as long as there are any. He added that they have done so and will continue to do so in the coming period.
Read what experts had to say about the latest labour market data
Is labour importation necessary?
"What we've been doing is expanding employment, we call it extensive economic policy, it's fizzled out, there are no more people actually. We need to import labour. We have 100,000 foreigners working for us, as anyone who has ordered a pizza in Budapest can see. This model is exhausted. What we need is for those who work to increase their added value. So they should earn more in more productive jobs," Economist Zoltán Pogátsa told Economx Podcast.
According to the expert, all governments in Hungary always claim that we are no longer an assembly plant, we are no longer low added value. There is a very simple measure of when we will know that this is true. We will know when we have high wages. Mostly Western European prices and, by comparison, wages in Hungary are a third as high. The disposable income of Hungarians is the lowest in the entire European Union, together with Bulgarians, while prices are practically at the same level as in Germany.
Since the change of regime, the experience has been that the rhetoric of all governments has always been to support small and medium-sized enterprises, which are typically domestically owned. In reality, it has actually supported the big multinationals. The Fidesz government is no exception," the economist said.
Photo by Sándor Czomba