20 years of Hungary in the EU: how has employment changed?

By: Trademagazin Date: 2024. 04. 09. 11:38

On May 1, 2004, ten new states joined the European Union, including Hungary. In our series of articles, we use one indicator to explore how the situation of our country has changed during our 20-year EU membership. The subject of our present article is the change in employment.

In Hungary in 2004, the employment rate in the 15-64 age group was 56.8%. This has risen to 74.4% by 2022, which means an outstanding increase of 17.6 percentage points. However, the change in the employment level was not uniform: between 2004 and 2010, it essentially stood at 57%, and then began to rise rapidly from the beginning of the 2010s. In 2020, there was a very slight decrease (much lower than the EU average) due to layoffs due to the coronavirus crisis, but after that the indicator started to rise again.