Number of unemployed at all-time low in Hungary

Hungary’s unemployment rate eased to 4.7% in August-October from 4.7% in the preceding three-month period, the Central Statistical Office (KSH) has reported on Tuesday.

The latest reading corresponds to a 1.7 percentage point decrease compared to the same period of 2015.

Meanwhile, the number of employed people dropped to under 220,000, which is also a new record low.

A year earlier the stats office recorded 70,000 more unemployed people.

The National Employment Service’s statistics of job seekers - based on individual registrations rather than on estimates - had 280,000 job seekers on record (on average) in the Aug-Oct period, but this is also a record low figure.

The number of employed people was 4.404 million at the end of October, of which

• 221,000 were in public works’
• 115,000 were cross-border commuters; and
• 4.068 million were employed on the local primary labour market.

The number of employees showed the biggest increase on the primary labour market, 16,000 to be exact. Excluding those in public works the increase was about 150,000 in annual terms.

The three-month moving average number of people employed in public work schemes shows decrease based on the last four sets of data, but 221,000 people is a rather high figure still, and it does not indicate that rechannelling work into the business sector has accelerated.

• Tags:
• economy,
• employment,
• unemployment,
• labour,
• public work