Last year 52.1 per cent of women aged 15-64 years had a job in Hungary, and this is the highest employment rate recorded by the Hungarian Central Statistical Office since 1992 – Ministerial Commissioner responsible for the improvement of women’s employment prospects Piroska Szalai said at a press conference in Szombathely.

Concerning the issue of employment, Hungary performed better in 2012 than it used to: 100 thousand more people were in employment than at the time when the Government took office in 2010 and 64 thousand more compared to 2011, she said, adding that within the 15-64 age group there were 42 thousand women and 22 thousand men among the 64 thousand people who were hired in this period.

The Government of Hungary does everything possible to further stimulate employment, and the Government objective of having 1 million new jobs by the end of this decade remains unchanged, the Ministerial Commissioner stressed.

As she said, last year the Government introduced two large-scale measures aimed at boosting the creation of jobs: one of them was the new Labour Code and the other was the Job Protection Action Plan.

The Job Protection Action Plan provides significant allowances on employer contributions for every population segment with labour market disadvantages. These include people below the age of 25 years, those above the age of 55 years as well as poorly educated people, and in their case employers only pay half of the usual contributions.

She also added, women with small children belong to the fourth priority group. Currently only every third woman with children under the age of 6 can successfully return to the labour market. Therefore, in order to help as many as possible of them to keep their jobs, the state – via the Job Protection Action Plan -- provides subsidies for employers for up to three years. Under this measure, no contributions are to be paid for two years, and in the third year the employer is obliged to pay only 50 per cent of contributions, the Ministerial Commissioner stressed.

(Ministry for National Economy)