Hungarian Conservative

In the second part of our series looking at important facts concerning the Hungarian economy and society, our authors shed light on how the Orbán governments have managed to achieve a spectacular turnaround in terms of employment after 2010.

‘We believe that the Hungarian model is the right one, whereby asylum applications must be made outside the EU and refugees are only allowed to come after proper checks have been carried out. This is so because the Hungarian government holds, in accordance with international law, that refugees are entitled to asylum in the first safe country they reach, not in any, distant country of their preference.’

The Hungarian NGO Menedék is behind the project to give reliable and up-to-date information for foreign workers and refugees currently located in Hungary. According to the website, there are 70,000 foreign workers employed in the country today.

The Roma were the real losers of the fall of communism. With the regime change, most Hungarian Roma, and in fact, many non-Roma Hungarians, lost their livelihoods, as the unskilled jobs they had filled vaporized with the collapse of the outdated and unsustainable industry created under state socialism.

The 22.4 percentage point reduction in child poverty between 2014 and 2021 in Hungary, which is also an EU record, is clearly due to employment growth, and primarily to the growth of the employment of women with children.

Sándor Czomba stated that since 2010, the number of employed people has increased from 3.7 million to 4.7 million, thus achieving one of the government’s commitments to create one million new jobs in ten years.

According to the National Bank’s forecast, slow disinflation is expected in March, followed by a strong disinflationary trend, with a good chance of reaching single-digit inflation by the end of the year.

István Forgács argues that it is through education and work that the situation of the Hungarian Roma population can be improved.

Recently published statistics about 2022 workforce data show that the Hungarian unemployment rate has plunged to under four per cent.