Hungary IT sector suffers labour shortage

Budapest, September 5 (MTI) – Last year, 22,000 jobs in Hungary’s IT sector went unfilled, business daily Világgazdaság said on Monday.

Counting positions indirectly affected by the labour shortage in the sector, altogether 72,000 spots were vacant, Ádám Horváth, who is in charge of education for IT business association IVSZ, told the paper. The shortage has worsened this year, he said.

Horváth noted that just 5,000 Hungarians started studying computer science and programming this year, one third the number necessary to meet demand for labour in the sector. Only 6-8 percent of young Hungarians starting their studies at college or university enrolled into an IT programme, he added.

Around half of those people, 52 percent, decide to discontinue their studies in the second year citing concern over the curriculum’s content and the age of hardware, Horváth said.

Source: MTI