Labour market: propaganda v. reality

168ora.hu reports that there are major differences between what the propaganda of Fidesz says about the labour market’s current status and the actual situation of it: the propaganda plays with statistics to cover the reality and show a favourable picture.

As another success, in their report on the first quarter of the year, NGM and Fidesz say that the government of Orbán managed to halve the unemployment, which was doubled by the former Socialist government, and they could increase employments by 600 thousand people in 6 years, thus, it is 4.3 million now.

However, the site writes that it is not quite the situation: the Socialists did not double the unemployment rate, for it was about 6-7% pre-Depression. Besides, it increased similarly in other countries thanks to the Depression. Moreover, the all-time low was reached by the Orbán government in the first quarter of 2013, when the rate raised to 11.8%.

Then the strengthening by public work started: there were less than 50,000 public workers in 2010 but this number became 224,000 this year. While the forer official data barely included those working abroad, currently a number of 140,000 also improves the statistics. Even though their actual number is about twice as many this still makes the unemployment rates seem much better. Also, about 100,000 people disappeared from the register.

Therefore, to have a more realistic view, the official data shall be corrected by approximately 350 thousand, for actually everybody is taken for employed whose public burdens increase the income of the Hungarian budget. This is very misleading, for the people working abroad and people working as public workers rather decrease than increase this amount: this year nearly 400 billion HUF went there. Furthermore, the number of people working in the public sector and central bureaucracy increased in the last 6 years.

The real situation may be shown by the private sector: the number of employments did not increase that much, by the beginning of the year it was barely more than before the Depression. About the GDP, the site suggests the comparison of the economic performance and the official employment data of the past 6 years, as they show major contradictions.