Government to continue public sector pay rises next year

Hungary’s government will continue public sector wage rises next year, the Finance Ministry’s state secretary for employment policy said on Wednesday.

Salaries of soldiers and police will rise another by 5 percent next year, said Sándor Bodó. The average salaries of Hungarians in these sectors will have risen by 50 percent, on average, since 2015, he added.

Health-care professionals will get another 8 percent pay rise from November of 2019.

The government launched a series of pay increases in the sector in 2016.

The government will decide on the scale and type of pay rises for civil servants in the autumn, Bodó said.

Its aim is to ensure that everyone who can work gets a job, and the 2019 budget has been prepared with this in mind, he said.

The new tax package also includes several measures that affect the labour market, Bodó told a press conference.

Tax allowances will be more targeted and they will be deductible up to the minimum wage instead of the former threshold of 100,000 forints (EUR 320), he added.

Ever since 2010, full employment has been the main target of employment policy, and thanks to the government measures introduced so far, the current level of employment is close to this target.

Some 750,000 more people hold jobs than eight years ago and the unemployment rate is at a historic low of 3.7 percent, Bodó said. Thanks to a six-year wage agreement, real wages increased by more than 10 percent in the first third of 2018, followed a two-digit increase last year, he added.

Bodó said nearly half million people are likely to enter the primary labour market from public work schemes, as well as school-leavers, pensioners returning to work and Hungarians moving back from abroad.

Featured image: MTI

Source: MTI