No shop assistants in Hungary

As Daily News Hungary has already reported, permanent labour shortage causes serious problems to Hungarian economy. Though retail trade is growing, companies cannot find cashiers, sellers or stock associates in Hungary even for higher wages. Thus, the biggest Hungarian food stores are searching for at least 1,000 shop assistants at the moment – according to blokkk.com. A kind of solution could be wage union initiated by Hungarian opposition party Jobbik.

Wage increase can only maintain staff

Auchan, Spar and Tesco have increased wages for their employees lately.

Despite offering more money than the average, they are still in great need for new employees.

Based on modest estimates, not long before Christmas there are the same number of “I will be back in a minute” slate hanging signs than the ones showing price cut’s, which clearly shows that even small businesses suffer from permanent labour shortage.

In fact, shopkeepers have been grieving especially for the past two years. While their income enhanced, the number of shops decreased. In addition,

the number of their employees dropped by 23,000 between the second quarter of 2016 and the Q2 of 2017.

Meanwhile, wages increased among physical workers like cashiers, sellers or stock associates, as well. As a result, their salaries exceeded 189 thousand forints (605 EUR) in August meaning a 17% increase compared to the 162 thousand (520 EUR) in the previous year. This 27 thousand forints (86.5 EUR), however, were only enough to maintain staff in these jobs.