Although employment in Hungary is at a record high, it is precisely those occupations where there are already shortages from where most people left the labor market last year, data of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office show. Among the different sectors, it was the trade sector that recorded the biggest loss of employees most people between September and November 2021, compared to the 2020 data, according to the business daily Világgazdaság.
This article was originally published on our sister-site, Ungarn Heute.
While in the fall of last year only 586,500 people worked in the trade sector, in the period of September-November 2020 there were 610,400 people. This corresponds to a decrease of 24,000 people.
The second-largest loss was recorded in the healthcare sector, and in this industry, especially in the field of social workers, the number of employees decreased by 17,000 compared to the same period.
Világgazdaság assessed it as a kind of “COVID symptom” that while 7,000 fewer people were employed in the hospitality industry in the fall months of last year, 9,000 more were employed in the accommodation sector than a year earlier.
However, there are sectors where there was significant growth, such as warehousing and transportation, where the number of employees increased by 28,000, but despite the decrease, trade still recorded the highest number of employees in the country, with 586,000 employees in the sector. In third place is public administration with 425,600 employees. Construction (368,400), education (360,800), scientific and technical activities (224,800), and agriculture (200,300) are on other places on the list.
Looking only at trade, the figures from the Hungarian Central Statistical Office show that alarm bells have recently been ringing in this sector, and not without reason. The biggest challenge in this sector today is the shortage of labor. According to Katalin Neubauer, Secretary-General of the Hungarian National Trade Association (MNKSZ), turnover among retailers is very high, and it is difficult to train new employees quickly.
Featured photo by Zoltán Balogh/MTI
