The number of foreign workers coming to Czechia continues to grow, as new data compiled by the Czech Statistical Office shows. To understand these new trends, we spoke with Dalibor Holý, Director of the Labour Market and Equal Opportunities Statistics Department.
“The numbers of foreigners are growing gradually, and it’s because they are filling in the gaps in the labor market. We have a very low unemployment rate and growing wages, quicker than the western part of the EU. It looks somehow like a brain drain from Eastern Europe.”
Is it a specific kind of labor that foreigners are doing or is it a variety of work?
“There are two extremes. Blue collar workers which are in factories predominantly that have the same wages as Czechs. The second extreme is foreign managers and professionals, they earn higher salaries than Czech nationals, sometimes twice as high. It looks like a brain drain because it’s the ICT sector and high value added sector, and they are part of shortening the gap between Eastern and Western Europe.”
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Author: Amelia Mola-Schmidt