Zlín - Number of Slovaks that commute to work abroad is no longer increasing, informed the Statistical Office of the Slovak Republic.
In the Czech Republic, the number of Slovak workers is in fact decreasing.
Thanks to Slovakia´s economic boom, they are attracted back to their homeland. The same trend is having an influence on the Czech economy.
Due to high employment rates in the Czech Republic and unwillingness of people to accept certain jobs, it is hard for some companies to find the required workforce. For these firms, the prospects are grim.
Abundance of vacancies
The Slovak Statistical Office stated that while during the first three months of last year the number of Slovaks working abroad increased by more than 30,000, this year the growth in the three months was only 8,000.
"The reason of this decrease lies with the abundance of job openings in Slovakia," Ivan Chrappu from the Slovak Statistical Office said to Slovak media.
The polls also showed that Slovaks prefer to work in "old" EU member states in Western Europe.
Now it is above all Slovak specialists, such as doctors or nurses, that look for work in the Czech Republic. On the contrary, the flow of manual labor has stopped.
Ebbing tide
Czech statistics confirm the decreasing numbers of Slovak workers in the country. After the first three months of this year, there were 101,000 Slovaks working in the Czech Republic - there were 300 more at the end of last year.
Even economists and human resource workers agree that Slovakia no longer constitutes a major pool of foreign labor force for Czech firms.
"The main wave is gone. The quick development of the Slovak economy and arrival of foreign investors created tens of thousands of new jobs and there are not so many reasons for Slovaks to go abroad," said Roman Konečný from Etis consultant company to Aktuálně.cz.
"Easterners" filling the vacuum
Czech companies seem to be increasingly searching for workers in Ukraine. In the first three months of this year, nearly 5,000 of them came to work in the Czech Republic.
In addition to 66,000 Ukrainians working in the Czech Republic, there is also a growing number of Vietnamese - in past year their number has grown from 5,400 to 11,000.
On top of that, the number of Mongolian, Bulgarian and Romanian workers has almost tripled in the past year.
