These were the trends on the Slovak labour market

What did 2018 bring in career and employment in Slovakia?

Illustrative stock photoIllustrative stock photo (Source: SME)
  • The favourable pro-growth sentiment among foreign investors in Slovakia persists.

Almost half of them plan to expand and look for new employees while the biggest obstacles hampering their businesses in Slovakia remain the shortage of qualified labour and corruption, as stems from the regular business survey carried out by foreign chambers of commerce, presented in late March 2018.

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  • Slovakia scored 24th among the 88 countries that participated in the EF English Proficiency Index research, with a score of 58.11 points.

Read also: 2019: The peak is over, tension on the market will ease Read more 

Czechs improved the most among the neighbours, jumping 2.12 points to the 20th position. Poland scored best among the Visegrad Group countries at 13th. Sweden, the Netherlands, Singapore and Norway dominated the overall ranking.

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  • The 2016 Brexit referendum has affected the number of job ads, in which employers and agencies hire Slovaks to work in the United Kingdom.

While in the third quarter of 2016 there were 216 job offers in the UK published on the Profesia.sk job portal, two years later they dropped by roughly 65 percent. The job portal reported 49 job offers in the UK between November and December 2018.

  • Grafton Recruitment surveyed people, asking them about the most annoying questions they receive during a job interview.

It suggests that 21 percent of respondents consider “Where do you see yourself in five or 10 years?” their least favourite question. In addition, 17 percent of respondents do not like questions regarding their family status, age, children, or sexual orientation, which are questions hiring managers are not allowed to ask by law. One-tenth of respondents have been asked vulgar and offensive questions.

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Top 5 worst questions according to job applicants
1. Where do you see yourself in XY years?
2. Do you have children?
3. Are you married?
4. Why did you decide to apply for a job at our company?
5. What are your weaknesses and strengths?
  • Native Bratislavans earn more than people coming from outside the capital.

While native Bratislavans earn €1,235 a month on average, people coming from outside the capital get around €235 more, i.e. €1,471 a month on average, as stems from an analysis published by the Institute for Financial Policy in May 2018.

  • The number of job offers published at the Profesia.sk job portal did not break any new record in 2018.

Over 1,000 fewer offers published on the website compared to 2017, when the highest number of job ads in the company’s history was published. Despite the drop, 2018 remains the year with the second highest number of job offers being published on Profesia.sk.

  • Slovakia has become less flexible in employment.

The country ranked 32nd out of 41 countries surveyed in the Employment Flexibility Index, down by six places compared to the previous year. One of the main reasons was the increase in surcharges for night work and weekend shifts in the first half of 2018.

  • About every third Slovak changed their job at least once during the past year.

Of nearly 88,000 Slovaks who created a CV on the Profesia.sk job portal, mostly translators, marketers and journalists changed their job the most often. The website analysed 87,545 CVs created by jobseekers between October 2017 and September 2018. The results suggest that up to 32.8 percent of them changed their job in the past 365 days.

  • Companies plan to raise basic wages by 3.8 percent on average in 2019.

Read also: New vouchers re-spark red tape controversy Read more 

The increase is identical to the planned raise for 2018They originally planned a wage increase of 3.8 percent last year, but the actual wage increase was 4.4 percent, according to the PayWell 2018 Study published by PwC Slovakia. It also suggests that the production sector continues to grow dynamically, with blue-collar incomes growing year-on-year by 6.4 percent. Altogether 281 companies operating in 17 sectors participated in the survey.

  • Top managers profit the most from financial bonuses.

For them, financial bonuses received during and at the end of the year may account for up to 33 percent of their total annual income. In all central and eastern European countries, these year-end bonuses, on average, are up to a tenth of a top manager’s annual income, according to the Paylab study. Low and mid-level managers receive financial benefits on average of up to 23 percent of their annual income. At other levels, the income added through financial bonuses accounts for a lower share of annual pay. The most widespread are variable monthly commissions. Employees in the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Slovakia receive them the most often.

  • As many as 49 percent of Slovaks are stressed at their workplace several times a week.

More than one-fifth of Slovaks confirmed that they experience stressful situations nearly every day. This stems from an online survey carried out by Profesia company for the Business Leaders Forum, an association of responsible companies running at the Pontis Foundation on nearly 3,000 respondents. The most cited cause for stress is excessive workload (45 percent).

  • Risk of one’s job being automated in the near future is high.

With the increasing use of industrial robots across the globe, an average worker in Slovakia faces a 62 percent median probability that his or her job will be automated “in the near future”, the Bloomberg news agency reported, citing the study published by the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development.

  • Slovakia ranked 83rd in the Global Gender Gap Report 2018 published by the World Economic Forum, scoring 0.693 points.

Read also: Slovakia needs to increase labour productivity to match wages in western Europe Read more 

Together with the Czech Republic (82nd) and the Kyrgyz Republic (86th), they are almost tied at having closed slightly more than 69 percent of their overall gender gap. Among them, the Czech Republic and Slovakia are moving in opposite directions. While the former gains several places due to a reduced wage gap and an increase in women’s representation in parliament, the latter moves down several ranks due to a widening gender gap in representation of women among legislators, senior officials and managers. However, Slovakia is one of three countries (together with Latvia and the Czech Republic) fully closing both their Health and Survival and Educational Attainment gender gaps.

  • Slovak women work 61 days a year for free because of the gender pay gap.

If men receive 100 percent of their salary for 365 days a year, women obtain only 82 percent of their salary. The average gender pay gap in Slovakia is 18 percent, and belongs among the highest in the EU. The lower gap is in the non-business sphere (9.7 percent), while in the business sphere the gap is almost 20 percent, according to Oľga Pietruchová, head of the Labour Ministry’s gender equality department.

  • A strong and familiar brand, good reputation, remuneration and benefits and a good team were the main factors determining the most attractive employers of last year.

Altogether 13,693 respondents, who participated in the competition organised for the seventh year by the company Profesia, selected the winners from 196 nominated firms in 10 categories.

Most attractive employer

Category

Winner

Media

Radio and Television of Slovakia

IT and telecom

T-Systems Slovakia

Transport and logistics

Kuehne + Nagel

Manufacturing and industry

Slovnaft

Tourism, gastronomy and hotel industry

McDonald’s Slovakia

Shared service centres

UNIQA Group Service Center Slovakia

Trade and services

Kaufland Slovenská republika

Hospitals and health care

Lekárne Dr. Max

Banking, finances and insurance

Slovenská sporiteľňa

Consulting (honourable mentions only)

Pricewaterhouse Cooper's Slovensko, Deloitte, Ernst & Young

  • Only 10 percent of women in Slovakia work in the ICT field.

With this result, the country belongs to those with the lowest share of females working in this sector in the EU. However, statistics suggest that a young generation of IT women is being brought up in Slovakia, as stems from an analysis of Slovenská Sporiteľňa.

  • The interest of foreigners to work in Slovakia is low.

The influx of foreigners seeking jobs is higher in both other EU and Visegrad

Read also: Employers and jobseekers do not speak the same language Read more 

Group (V4) countries, as stems from the latest report of Boston Consulting Group and the data of the Institute of Financial Policy (IFP). The annual share of incoming expats to the population in the past few years has been four times lower than in the Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary, and more than 10 times lower than in the EU 15.

  • As many as 80 percent of employers in Slovakia say that the number of their employees will not change or increase in the following two to three years due to automation.

Thos stems from the Skills Revolution 2.0 survey carried out by ManpowerGroup in 42 countries on 20,000 employers. However, the impact on respective job positions will change. IT fields, where companies expect the highest increase in the number of employees, will be the most affected. On the other hand, they expect the highest drop to be seen in administrative and office jobs.

  • The share of job offers requiring hard skills (i.e. professional knowledge and skills) has decreased significantly.

They are gradually being replaced by soft skills like logical thinking, presentation skills and teamwork, according to the Profesia.sk job portal.

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Stock image.

Twice as many Ukrainians work in Slovakia now than before the Russian invasion.


Píšem or pišám?

"Do ľava," (to the left) I yelled, "Nie, do prava" (no, to the right), I gasped. "Dolšie," I screamed. "Nie, nie, horšie..." My Slovak girlfriend collapsed in laughter. Was it something I said?


Matthew J. Reynolds
Czech biochemist Jan Konvalinka.

Jan Konvalinka was expecting a pandemic before Covid-19 came along.


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