Terrible present and future! Hungarian skilled workers most likely to work abroad

Single male skilled workers aged between 20 and 39 represent the largest group of Hungarians who plan to work abroad, business daily Világgazdaság reported on Friday.

Some 5 percent of respondents aged between 15 and 74 said they would be willing to move abroad to work in the next two years, while 84 percent said they had no such plans, the paper said, quoting a survey by the Central Statistical Office. Some 80 percent said they would not move for work purposes even within Hungary.

Among those who want to work abroad, 46 percent of them plan to go for more than two years and 14 percent have no intention of returning to Hungary.

Last year, 109,000 people, or 2.5 percent of the workforce, said they worked abroad. The number of Hungarians working abroad dropped by 7,000 over a year but this was still 29,000 higher than five years ago, the paper said.

The majority of workers abroad were men aged between 25 and 44 with vocational diplomas and 85 percent worked in Austria, Germany and the UK.