The unemployment rate in the Czech Republic was 3.6% in June, unchanged from May and 0.2% lower than a year earlier.
The regions with the lowest unemployment rate are Prague and Vysočina, where it stands at 2.7 %. In contrast, the region with the highest unemployment rate is Ústí nad Labem, with 5.9 %. Moreover, Karviná, which had the highest unemployment rate for many years, was recently overtaken by Most, where the unemployment rate rose to 8.4 % , partly due to the closure of the CSA quarry. At the opposite end, the district with the lowest unemployment rate is Prague-East, where only 1.4 % of people were looking for work last month.
The number of people registered at labour offices includes unemployed persons who cannot start work immediately, unemployed women on maternity leave, prisoners or unemployed persons on sick leave. In June in the Czech Republic there were 250,337 available unemployed persons between the ages of 15 and 64 who could start work immediately.
In terms of level of education, in June most of the unemployed were looking for work with lower qualifications, in particular with an apprenticeship without a high school diploma and primary education. Employers are most often interested in construction workers, forklift and warehouse operators, assembly workers, cooks, truck and tractor-trailer drivers and cleaners. The greatest demand for new employees is in Prague and the Central Bohemia region.
According to today’s data from the Czech Labour Office, the total number of unemployed persons at the end of June was therefore 272,684, 1,638 fewer than in the previous month. There were even fewer job vacancies than job seekers, down almost 3,000 to 263,552 from the previous month. The excess of demand over labour supply continues for the seventh consecutive month. Minister of Labour and Social Affairs Marian Jurečka (KDU-ČSL) stated that the unemployment rate in June did not change significantly and remained very low, even the lowest in the entire EU.
Since the invasion of Ukraine by Russia in February 2022, a total of 436,143 Ukrainians granted temporary protection by the Czech Republic had obtained a job by the end of June; about 67% were women. According to the Labour Office, in some areas, employers thus gained much-needed employees. Some refugees then returned home or left their jobs. At the end of June, 123,813 of them worked in the Czech Republic, the majority, almost 21,900, in the Central Bohemian region. Most of them work as helpers in construction, production and transport, or as assemblers of products and equipment.
According to Petr Dufek, the analyst at Creditas Bank, it is not usual for unemployment to rise in June, but the reason is probably that there are layoffs, even among stable employees, and this balances out the positive effect of the increase in seasonal work, causing the unemployment rate to stagnate.
David Marek, analyst at Deloitte, predicts a gradual worsening of the labour market, especially in industry and construction. Taking seasonality into account, he stated that the unemployment rate increased slightly to 3.8 %. At the same time, job vacancies, which are now less than the number of people out of work, are decreasing. The last time fewer jobs were available than now was in 2017.
Dominik Rusinko, an analyst at ČSOB, also expects unemployment to rise slightly to 4% in the second half of this year. Although he does not expect mass layoffs, the labour market will cool down, due to the weak performance of domestic industry. Overall, the labour market will remain structurally unstable and companies will still have difficulty finding labour.
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