Due to visa problems, Czech employers are ready to hire specialists from EU countries
As Radio Prague notes, the mentioned figures may differ from the actual state of affairs. After all, not all foreigners, when getting a job in the Czech Republic, obtain the necessary permits. Only last year, the Foreign Police identified and expelled more than 3,000 illegally employed foreign workers from the country.
According to the results of a study by the recruitment agency Adecco, in the ranking of attractiveness for employment, the Czech Republic took 25th place among 119 countries included in the survey project. The Czech Republic is part of a group of countries in central, eastern, and southern Europe with the widest range of employment opportunities and high levels of working conditions. The degree of occupational safety and social security play a role here.
The Czech level of remuneration for work performed, as Karel Havlíček from the Association of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises emphasizes, is approaching the EU standard. This primarily concerns qualified employees. "Thanks to this, the Czech Republic is attracting not only workers from economically less prosperous EU regions, for example, from Bulgaria and Romania. Personnel from countries similar to the Czech Republic in economic indicators are flocking here – from Spain, Portugal, and southern Italy," emphasizes Karel Havlíček.
The number of qualified foreigners employed in Czech companies that have research and development departments is growing. There are also more foreign employees in the IT sector. However, the greatest demand for foreign workers in blue-collar professions is observed in the manufacturing industry and construction companies. These sectors are also associated with typical problems that employers hiring foreigners have to solve.
"At our construction sites, we have citizens of Slovakia, Poland, Ukraine, Moldova, Bosnia and Herzegovina. In Ukraine, for example, we conducted interviews with potential employees ourselves. However, the workers we selected have been waiting for Czech visas for 4 months," complains Aleš Kocourek, founder of the construction company Kasten, where half of the workforce are foreigners.
Due to visa problems, for many companies, employees from EU countries are preferable, as it is enough to simply notify the Labor Office about their hiring.
"Currently, when the Czech labor market is experiencing a shortage of domestic personnel, Italy and Spain fall into the category of advantageous options for solving the problem. In these countries, there is a high degree of unemployment precisely among citizens of those professions that the Czech Republic needs," emphasizes Ondřej Vysoglad, director of the recruitment agency Adecco.