Prague, Oct 3 (CTK) – The Czech Republic is becoming short of the workforce, not even immigrants can compensate the rising gap and only a larger involvement of elderly people can prevent a decline in labour productivity, daily Lidove noviny (LN) writes on Monday, referring to a study completed by UniCredit Bank.
In spite of a record increase in salaries, companies have problem finding employees. As a result, many of them cannot extend their production and contribute to the country’s economic growth, the daily writes.
However, the Czech population will hardly rise. Not even the influx of economic migrants from “traditional” countries such as Bulgaria, Romania and Ukraine can save the Czech labour market, the paper writes.
By 2030, the labour market will become one of the crucial factors to slow down Czech economic growth, the study has shown.
“From the macroeconomic point of view, the workforce’s availability will be the factor limiting the GDP growth,” the study’s author, economist Pavel Sobisek, is quoted as saying.
Hypothetically, foreign workers may be a solution. The Czech Republic has been a pure workforce importer, with the number of foreign workers exceeding the number of the Czechs who go to work abroad, the study says.
However, the prevalence of the former over the latter has been shrinking in the past three years, it says.
“This may be caused by the fact that the Czechs are no longer unwilling to move in search of work. This is no longer true of the young generation, for example,” Sobisek said.
In other words, the number of the Czechs who seek a job abroad has been rising, the daily writes.
Political leaders’ stances and the mood in society indicate that the country is unlikely to fundamentally change its [rather negative] approach to the mass immigration faced by Europe, the paper writes.
Based on the U.N. migration model, the study says 12,000 immigrants will come to the Czech Republic annually. Out of them, some 8,000 to 10,000 people may join the country’s workforce. Such a relatively low number cannot help the five-million Czech labour market significantly, Sobisek said.
In future, the Czech Republic even cannot rely on the traditional foreign job applicants from Romania and Bulgaria, since these countries, too, will tackle profound demographic changes, the study says.
The liberalisation of the system of labour visas for workers from outside the EU may have only a partial effect, it says.
However, future economic growth can mainly be secured by old-age pensioners, it continues.
According to the U.N., the adult population in the Czech Republic will not shrink in 2030, compared to 2015, but the number of young people will dramatically decline and the number of old people will dramatically increase.
Unless the number of workers in all age groups increases, the country’s workforce will decline by 6.9 percent by 2030, the study showed.
A space for such an increase mainly exists in the over-55 group. Without this increase, the country’s labour productivity would decline. Nevertheless, the involvement of elderly people will only slow down the problem of the workforce shortage, but it definitely will not solve it, LN writes.
