National Economy Minister: Migration cannot be the cure to labour market problems

Employment has improved markedly since 2010 in Hungary: the number of people with a job has grown by some 750 thousand and the unemployment rate has fallen by two-thirds, Minister for National Economy Mihály Varga has said in a conference in Budapest.

“Uncontrolled mass migration cannot remedy Europe’s labour market and demographic problems: less than one-fifth of migrants arriving in Germany have managed to land a job”, he added.

The support of projects which boost the number of jobs, the six-year wage agreement, the Job Protection Action, incentives for jobseekers and public work employees have significantly contributed to the success of Hungary’s employment policy, the Minister pointed out. Wages in real terms have increased concurrently with the number of jobs, he added, gaining some 50 percent since 2010.

The Government’s objectives have remained unchanged since 2010, he said: they are aiming to recognize the value of work, strengthen families and boost economic growth, a precondition of all these goals.

In the fourth quarter of 2017 – according to working day-adjusted data – the volume of Hungary’s GDP grew by 4.8 percent, while in the year 2017 GDP was up by 4.2 percent, an unprecedented figure in the past 12 years, he noted.

One-fourth of last year’s growth, some 1 percentage point, has been the result of the economic stimulus generated by the six-year wage and tax agreement concluded in November 2016. Owing to the 12.8 percent wage hike and 90 thousand new jobs in the first eleven months of last year, employees earned some HUF 1 100bn more than the year before, and Mihály Varga said.

Favourable labour market trends have also been underpinned by the Youth Guarantee and the Back to the Labour Market schemes, thanks to which “we assisted and continue to assist the labour market integration of several hundreds of thousands of people through job and training incentives,” he said.

Mihály Varga has also referred to a study on migration in Germany, published recently, which found that only 18 percent of people who had been given refugee status had a job in the spring of 2018,

while the unemployment rate was over 50 percent among them. And although in 2016 the country has spent some EUR 22bn on integration, the analysis claims that it is unrealistic to expect that this amount could be regained in a fiscal sense even in the medium term.

The standpoint of the Government of Hungary has been the same for years: employment and demographic challenges must be addressed with family incentives, labour market reforms as well as stable and dynamic economic growth – instead of migration, the Minister stated.

featured image: kormany.hu

Source: kormany.hu – press release