Thousands of teachers, bus drivers, postal workers missing in Hungary

There are places in the country where the local school has to find a full teaching staff if they want to open in September. Meanwhile, tens of thousands leave the country because of low wages.

Every company has to fight for the workforce

According to nepszava.hu, big Hungarian state-owned companies like MÁV (Hungarian Railways), Volánbusz Ltd (operating bus lines), Hungarian Post or BKV (Budapest Transport Privately Held Corporation) are currently searching for 2,500 new employees. 

The postal service company would like to find letter carriers, drivers and they have a lot of part-time job offers, as well. More than half of the jobs do not require a higher qualification than the 8 classes of the primary school which is interesting because a large part of these open positions are in small villages where people are not highly qualified, and still, the company cannot find the workforce. In the last three years, the Hungarian Post raised wages by 40.4 pc, and there are many kinds of bonuses, too. All the same, letter carriers

do not take home more than 500 EUR per month.

In the case of MÁV, there are not enough engineers, mechanics, overhead cable repairers, cashiers and ticket inspectors. Furthermore, János Meleg, chairman of the MÁV trade union, says that there are many permanently sick people in the staff and their replacement is challenging to find. This is probably because a large part of their team is already above 50. However, according to MÁV, the fluctuation is lower than 10 pc among their employees thanks to the many kinds of fringe benefits the company provides. A ticket inspector, for example, receives 600 EUR per month.

Volánbusz Ltd said to Népszava that their permanent recruiting campaign is successful though Imre Palkovics, president of the National Confederation of Workers’ Councils, said that without further payrise long-distance bus transport might collapse next year.

Bus drivers now get 15 pc less than the national average,

according to Mr Palkovics, the next phase of the payrise has to eliminate this gap.

BKV said that they are currently missing mechanics, drivers and engineers and added that replacing experienced drivers is the most challenging task. Fluctuation is around ten pc in the company, and despite considerable wage rises in the last few years, a beginner driver can only take home less than 450 EUR per month.

Exodus and labour shortage

According to RTL Klub, almost 4,000 teachers are missing from the Hungarian schools, 946 of them from the primaries. There is a school in Törökszentmiklós where the director has to find a full teaching staff by September if they want to open the gates then. According to Tamás Szűcs, president of the Teachers Democratic Trade Union (PDSZ) said that they expect teacher shortage to rise above 5,000 by September. This is why it can happen that in many schools classes will be postponed. Furthermore, he highlighted the bad but necessary practice of

teachers of Hungarian language or PE teaching Maths or Sciences

will continue in many state schools. 

Alfahir.hu reported that based on the results of the 2018 mobility survey conducted by the European Union, in 2018, more than

49 thousand Hungarians started to work in Austria,

32 thousand in Germany and 10 thousand in Great-Britain. The emigration of the Hungarians because of the low home wages has been a sever problem for years, and the number of people leaving does not decrease. 

The whole region struggles with the problem: 1.5 million people left Poland while 1 million Romania between 2013 and 2017. 

Meanwhile, only in 2017, 68 thousand people got a residence permit in Hungary. Almost half of them are Hungarians living outside the borders, while 32 thousand are foreigners. Most of them are Ukrainians (7,808), Chinese (2,879), Serbians (2,409) but there came 1,759 people from Iran and more than 2,000 from the USA.

Source: nepszava.hu, rtl.hu, alfahir.hu