Labour shortage critical in Hungary

As Daily New Hungary has already reported before, Hungarian economy is struggling hard with labour shortage. The reason is simple: people go West for higher wages and better working conditions. The most affected sectors are public transport and service, tourism and IT. A solution could be wage union initiated by opposition party Jobbik, but government does not support it.

Magyar Posta restricts service to tackle with labour shortage

According to Világgazdaság, Magyar Posta (Hungarian National Post) suffers greatly from labour shortage. In fact, it has

the most unfilled positions in Budapest and its neighbourhood, Western Hungary, and near the borders.

Furthermore, the company had approximately 500 open positions in the end of September. In detail, they missed at least 100 letter-carriers and 400 employees in the delivery sector.

As a result of an intensive recruitment period in the previous month, they could hire 500 new colleagues by the end of October. Meanwhile, the company extended its parcel processing area with 21 square meters and increased the number of crates in the busiest parcel terminals.

However, e-commerce grows more than 10% yearly, and according to forecasts its increase will be at least 18% this year. Thus,

Magyar Posta already had days in November when parcel traffic exceeded with more than 15% the average Christmas traffic.

To make matters worse, average parcel traffic may double during the Christmas peak. As a result, Magyar Posta was obliged to introduce new delivery regulations from 15 November. Firstly, business partners without a contract can only send 5-5 parcels by post in case of two delivery types. Furthermore, from 20 November, Magyar Posta temporarily suspended the delivery of mail items requiring separate or special handling. All in all, Magyar Posta suffers greatly from labour shortage together with BKV (Budapest Transport Privately Held Corporation).