Employment has been on the rise for eleven months in Hungary and the bulk of employment growth have been generated by the private sector, Minister of State for Vocational Training and Labour Market Sándor Czomba said at a conference on corporate responsibility in Budapest.
He added that although Hungarian unemployment and employment trends are favourable, from an EU perspective the country has a long way to go. The current 62-63 percent employment rate is a great achievement, but the EU is expecting this indicator to be 75 percent.
As the Minister of State stressed, the number of people in employment aged 15-24 years has increased by 40-50 thousand in comparison to 2010. This indicator has improved after the First Job Guarantee Programme was launched at the end of 2012. Within this category, the EU average is 32.3 percent and the Hungarian indicator is 23.1 percent, Sándor Czomba said, and that is the gap that must be gradually closed.
He explained that young people miss out on several job opportunities due to the lack of work experience. Therefore, the Government will spend altogether HUF 40bn until June 2016 on the Youth Guarantee Programme. Through this scheme, they aim to address some 40 thousand young people who are registered as unemployed for at least six months and help them find a job or a vocational training course. The objective of the EU with the Youth Guarantee Programme is to assist – through some active employment policy measure -- young people below the age of 25 years within four months after they are registered as unemployed to find a proper job or join a vocational training course, he stated.
The Hungarian Government has implemented several measures focusing on young people, he added. However, the number of people under the age of 25 years who work and study is well below that of Western Europeans, therefore there is still a lot to do in this field, too.
Speaking about the First Job Guarantee Programme the Minister of State pointed out that following the period subsidized by the programme more than half of programme participants continued to be employed at the same workplace. Currently, more than 16 thousand people take part in the scheme.
As far as the Job Protection Action Plan is concerned, this scheme has not only managed to safeguard some jobs, but it has also generated a lot of them. Since the start, through the Programme enterprises have received more than HUF 100bn, he stated.
Long-time unemployment has been one of the most pressing issues, he said. It is almost impossible for unemployed people who have been out of work for years to return to the labour market. It has been another obstacle in fighting unemployment that the mobility of Hungarian work force is close to zero, Sándor Czomba explained.
(Ministry for National Economy)
