Black labour flourishing at construction sites in Hungary

The authorities charged employers with almost 680,000 euros altogether last year. The rules concerning administration are often neglected. Black labour is increasing in a critical measure in Hungary, as VG.hu reported.

As black labour is a critical factor in Hungary’s high rate of unemployment, it needs thorough searches regularly. The National Economy Ministry of Hungary stated recently that illegal employment has begun to increase rapidly. 17.11 percent of the employees checked by the authorities (12,929 people) were employed illegally in 2017. This rate was only 12.73 percent the year before.

47 percent of workers in the building industry were clandestine workers, which is also 5 percent more than in 2016.

They are accounted for 38 percent of the unregistered workers discovered by the authorities. It is not a surprise hence the enormous labour shortage in this field.

Almost one-tenth of clandestine workers were working for agricultural companies. Moreover, about one-third of the employees working in the field of agriculture are unregistered. This rate is only 2 percent in the machinery industry.

A similar tendency can be observed with security workers, but in this case, last year’s 9 percent rate is an improvement compared to the 11 percent in 2016. However, if we compare these rates to the rate of employees checked by the authorities, we witness a slight increase from 21 percent to 22. Catering is in a similar situation: the number of caught clandestine workers decreased from 16 percent to 10, but the overall rate increased from 16 percent to 19.

The authorities highlighted that the number of checked employees has decreased from 94,148 people to 75,576 between 2016 and 2017.

This means that though the partial rate of unregistered workers decreased in some branches, the overall rate increased in almost every field as well as the absolute number of clandestine workers.

The only branch of employment that could produce improvement is the machinery industry.

The most “popular” way of violating the rules is failing to register the employee. This tendency is valid for both standard and simplified employment.

Source: VG.hu