Three times as many people apply for a job in Hungary as last year
EnglishProgrammers and accountants have the highest job security now, as demand for these professionals has even increased in Hungary since last year. In other areas, however, the decline this spring was so big that now there are up to 150-200 % more applicants for a job.
After the outbreak of the coronavirus, from March to May nearly 50,000 jobseekers registered at employment centres and since the beginning of the year 190,000 people have lost their jobs, according to the National Labour Office. During this time the demand for programmers and accounting professionals decreased the least, a joint report of Profession.hu and Ernst &Young revealed.
In the field of accounting, it was rather the lack of human resources that caused problems, as in spite of the crisis companies are still required to submit their reports. The IT sector, however, is more affected by the slowdown.
Some development projects had to be postponed, but at the same time other projects were brought to the fore, so this sector is expected to recover soon. Therefore, it is less exposed to the effects of the pandemic from a labour market perspective
Gábor Lázár, Head of HR at EY said.
In the last five months, apart from the two areas mentioned before, the most frequently posted job advertisements on Profession.hu were for sales assistants and cashiers, unskilled workers, material handling and loading jobs, project management positions, skilled workers and sales jobs.
The total number of job advertisements published on the site decreased by 59% in April and 47% in May compared to the previous year. The decline was down to 6% in September; but the number was already 5% higher in the first two weeks of October than in the same period last year.
One reason for this is that after the first wave of the coronavirus companies were still cautious and because of the uncertainty of the situation, they were not prepared yet for expansion
Imre Tüzes, business development manager of Profession.hu told növekedés.hu.
In different sectors the impact of the epidemic varied considerably; in manufacturing, IT and finance the number of jobs advertised on the portal has stagnated or increased slightly. In other sectors, such as tourism and hospitality it has declined dramatically. In general, the number of advertisements does not typically decrease. From 2013 the number of ads had been steadily increasing from 6,000 to roughly 12-14 thousand per month until one year ago. Between January and September last year 120,000 ads were published, this year the same number was 95-100 thousand during the same period.
The number of applicants for vacant positions has increased in all sectors / categories. In the third quarter, the increase in applications for sales and retail jobs was 90% year-on-year, while for administrative and office work it was 131%.
The most significant increase was in applications for customer service jobs, with 197% more applications than the previous year. The number of applications for IT operations positions increased less, but the growth was still 61%.
With the increase in the number of applicants, the wages decreased. Compared to the first quarter, net average wages fell by 20% in administration, 8% in sales, and by 5% and 6% in manual and skilled jobs.
IT, engineering, and construction jobs proved to be the most COVID-proof.
This is partly due to the fact that these professionals are in short supply anyway, but also because for example, IT professionals are needed for software development or maintenance despite the pandemic and remote working in these jobs is easily manageable
Mr Tüzes said.
