THE SLOVAK labour market’s hunger for IT and telecom experts means that positions in these sectors continue to top wage rankings. However, given the significant impact that supply and demand has on wages in Slovakia, salaries in some sectors are seeing more growth than others.
“For the time being professions in the IT sector are the best paid,” Martin Miklánek, regional manager in Slovakia of Manpower, told The Slovak Spectator. “More specifically, these are programmers and developers, but, of course, specialists in the automotive industry and production as well.”
Miroslav Dravecký, senior product manager at Profesia, the biggest job portal in Slovakia, agrees that in addition to IT, people can also earn a sound wage in the sectors of telecommunications, energy and industrial production, while attorneys, medical advisors, pilots and key account managers also enjoy healthy salaries.
Andrea Lišková, corporate marketing and PR director at McRoy Slovakia, added that financial analysts, auditors and senior positions in the pharmaceutical industry and in banks are also well remunerated.
In general the remuneration ranking in Slovakia is similar to that abroad, but the difference is in the exact wages.
“This ranking in Slovakia does not differ too much from how it looks like in other countries, but the wages themselves are, for example in Germany, several times higher,” said Dravecký.
For instance, while on its website the Salary Explorer lists the four highest paying jobs in Slovakia in the IT sector, with monthly salaries of €2,000, in Germany a civil engineer earns €7,958.
Lišková and Miklánek see room for wage growth in sectors that are seeking new workers.
“In the market there is still demand for candidates in the IT sector and an increasing interest in candidates for shared services centres,” said Miklánek. “In these segments we expect an increase of wages.”
On the other hand, Dravecký does not expect that a high increase of wages would oscillate somewhere above inflation.
“An upper-average growth of wages can be assumed in the sectors of the automotive industry, energy, information technologies and so on,” said Dravecký.
According to Dravecký, the labour market follows the same rules as other markets.
“When the demand is high, the price grows,” said Dravecký. “We can assume higher growth of wages in professions in which there will be high interest from the side of employers.” Since the number of specialists on the market is low, they have an advantage, and in the long run, technology and IT experts, as well as top managers and specialists in various sectors, from pharmaceuticals, marketing, trade and production, will rank highly, he added.
In this respect, Miklánek said that companies are becoming more interested in candidates with language skills and specialists in the IT, automotive and production sectors.
“Already today we are encountering a situation when often the demand of companies for candidates is higher than their offer on the labour market,” said Miklánek. “I assume that this factor will be one of the key factors affecting wages in the mentioned positions.”
In IT, for example, a growing trend is large data analysis, given that both small and large companies accumulate a lot of data, which they want to have analysed so they can offer tailor-made products to customers. HR experts estimate that people with an education in economics and mathematics and experience in IT would be able to meet this growing demand. Moreover, it is generally expected that more companies will get into mobile phones, and experts in this field will be needed, the Sme daily wrote, citing HR experts.
Slovakia’s population is, like others in Europe, aging and, thus, an increased demand for services for the elderly, either in medical or social care, is also expected.
More traditional trades will not disappear either, since higher workloads and more complicated household appliances mean that people prefer to call repairmen to fix a broken appliance or a dripping faucet.
“Tradesmen will certainly be [needed]; even today nobody is able to repair a washer at home themselves,” headhunter Dalibor Slávik told Sme.
Some statistics
In the second quarter of 2013, the average nominal monthly wage in the Slovak economy was €818, which, compared with the same period in 2012, grew 3.2 percent, the Statistics Office reported on September 4.
The highest average nominal monthly wages were found in the financial and insurance sectors (€1,593), information and communication (€1,572), and electricity, gas and steam supply (€1,568).
The monthly wage was lower than the average in 10 surveyed sectors. The lowest average nominal wage was in accommodation and food service activities (€484), arts, entertainment and recreation (€584) and construction (€598).
Compared with the same period in 2012, the fastest average nominal wage growth was recorded in professional, scientific and technical activities (9.8 percent), water supply (6.6 percent) and in manufacturing (5.2 percent). It decreased the most in real estate (6.3 percent) and in financial and insurance activities (3.1 percent).
