Sándor Czomba, the state secretary for employment policy, said the number of registered jobseekers was only 228,504 in Hungary in August in spite of the challenging economic situation.
Citing figures from the National Employment Service (NFSz), Czomba said the number of jobseekers was down by 3,000 from a year earlier. The government measures taken since 2010 have been effective in increasing employment, he added. Unemployment has fallen to a third of its earlier level, and the activity rate increased to 78% from 63.5%. This trend continued in the past one year. The number of the economically active population increased by 67,000 in a year, with the activity rate improving by a further 1.1 percentage points. Today, 82.6% of working-age men and 73.3% of women are present in the labor market. With this performance, Hungary has moved from the penultimate place in the EU ranking to the middle range among member states, Czomba said. Speaking about the government’s student summer jobs programme, Czomba said more than 29,700 students, a record high, participated in the programme this year compared to the originally planned 26,000-27,000. The government-subsidised the programme by 3.5 billion forints, he said. As in earlier years, 80% of the students were employed by local governments, with large numbers of participants taking summer jobs in catering and agriculture, Czomba added.