Labour shortage seen as a threat to economic growth

A left-wing policy analyst acknowledges that the Hungarian economy has performed well recently, but warns that future growth may be severely limited by the labour shortage.

The Hungarian economy looks stable, the budget is balanced, the volume of investment is high and the unemployment rate is at an historic low, Attila Bartha writes in Világgazdaság. But long-term growth is threatened by the shortage of labour, the left-wing analyst adds. Bartha notes that both private companies and the public sector are suffering from an increasing shortage of workforce. Bartha admits that the government has significantly increased wages in the most critical sectors including health care, but he fears that these measures are unlikely to stop the emigration of qualified workers. If the current trends of emigration and demographic decline are not reversed, the government will have no option but to reconsider its anti-immigrant stance, otherwise growth will slow down, Bartha predicts.

Tags: economy, employment, GDP, growth, jobs