Has the emigration in Hungary reached a turning point?

The Demographic Research Institute of the Hungarian Central Statistics Office reported recently that the percentage of emigration dropped in the recent few years and many people who left Hungary in the past years come back. The Central Statistics Office is pleased with the positive change and hopes that this tendency will become permanent.

According to portfolio.hu, in the past days, two studies about Hungary’s demographic situation were published by the Central Statistics Office. These studies show that Hungary was definitely an emigrating country at the beginning of 2000. In 2007 approximately 25,000 Hungarian citizens left the country and started a new life, mostly in Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. In 2010 nearly 50,000 citizens emigrated to Germany and Austria. In 2017 approximately 12,000 Hungarian born citizen lived in Austria and 10,000 in the United Kingdom. After the elections in April, it was a big dilemma whether Hungarian citizens’ interest turned to emigration or not. In June OECD reported that approximately 1 million people left Hungary in the past decade.

At the beginning of 2017, nearly 461 thousand Hungarian citizens lived in Switzerland.

In 2013 the percentage of emigration started to decrease. Between 2014 and 2015, emigration was no longer an issue in Hungary and in 2016 its percentage continued to decrease rapidly. Besides the rapid decreasing of emigration, many people started to come back to Hungary, although the exact number is hard to estimate.

In 2016 nearly 216 thousand Hungarian citizens who spent one year abroad lived in Hungary, among them, 130 thousand citizens lived abroad after 2000. This means that the number of people who came back after living abroad equals nearly 100 thousand.

According to the German Statistics Office’s report, between 2001 and 2006 approximately 15,000 people emigrated to Hungary, many of them were Hungarian citizens. In 2014 this number increased to 40,000. The situation is the same with Austria but with lesser people, approximately 6-7 thousand.

Although there is some positivity considering the emigration and demographical situation in Hungary, the percentage of Hungarian citizens who emigrate is still significant. The Central Statistics Office in Hungary hopes that they will find the method to persuade Hungarian people living abroad to come back and to stop the emigration.

Source: portfolio.hu