Number of registered jobseekers falls 2 percent

The data show 3,164 Hungarians registered as jobseekers for the first time during the month. The total number of new jobseeker registrations, including repeat registrations, reached 27,664.

Fully 42 percent of registered jobseekers received no benefits in April, while 35 percent had been seeking work for longer than a year.

Jobseekers were registered for 486 days on average.

Sandor Czomba, the state secretary for employment policy at the national economy ministry, said the number of jobseekers had never been as low in April as this year.

Referring the former Socialist prime minister, Czomba said that “compared to the [Ferenc] Gyurcsany era, there are now 1 million more people in work, while compared with 2010, the number of jobseekers has fallen by almost 400,000.

He said the government was carrying on working to boost employment activity and has launched a support scheme for long-term jobseekers targeted at helping disadvantaged people in addition to other similar programmes.