The First Job Guarantee Programme to assist career-starters will be re-launched as of 1 March 2013 with resources totalling HUF 5bn, which provides support for at least 7200 young people, Minister of State for Employment Sándor Czomba said at a press conference in Budapest. Skilled and unskilled young people under the age of 25 can sign up to the Programme at employment centres, which will also help them find an employer.

Employers receive the equivalent of wages and contributions paid for a career-starter for a maximum six months, after which they are obliged to keep the employee on for at least half the preceding employment period. The employer is entitled to receive support in accordance with the Job Protection Action Plan for the extended employment period.

Salaries cannot exceed one-and-a-half times the official minimum wage, the Minister of State explained.

Speaking about the former programme launched in September last year, Sándor Czomba said that at that time the objective had been to provide work to 3600 unskilled young people for four months each by paying subsidies of 3bn forints. The end result, however, was the creation of 7200 jobs from funding of HUF 3.6bn. In January 2013, 3900 young out of all those sponsored people still had their jobs, although the compulsory extended employment period was not among the requirements of that tender.

Disclosing statistical data, the Minister of State underlined that the number of first time job-seekers in Hungary is 72 thousand and the unemployment rate among them is 28.4 percent, in contrast to the 30 percent average within the EU. However, the number of unemployed, among those with primary or secondary school qualifications is above the EU average, while Hungarian data is also better for those with tertiary education attainment.

The Minister of State refuted newspaper allegations from earlier this morning related to the unemployment data of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. As he made clear, it is false to state that employees were shifted to part-time jobs or that the employment increase was due to the higher number of public work employees.

(Ministry for National Economy)