Number of foreign workers in Czech Republic increases to over half a million

The number of foreigners working in the Czech Republic has more than tripled since the country’s accession to the European Union in 2004. At the moment, there are more than half a million foreigners working in the country, according to Czech Statistics Office data and the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs.

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The largest group of foreign employees in the Czech Republic are unqualified workers from Eastern Europe, but a growing number of qualified employees from the north, west and south of Europe are also seeking employment in the country. On the contrary, the number of Vietnamese workers has dropped by 35 percent since 2008.

During the four years following the Czech Republic’s entry to the EU, the number of foreigners working in the country had increased by 379,000. After the global financial crisis there was a slight drop, but since 2011 their numbers have been steadily increasing.

While at the beginning of the new millennium, there were just a few hundred qualified employees from Western Europe, in recent years their numbers have increased to several thousand. Most of them, around 7,000, come from Germany, and around 15,000 come from Great Britain, France, Italy and Spain.

“Many foreign companies have moved their headquarters for Central and Eastern Europe to the Czech Republic, because it has become an increasingly attractive location. The quality of life has grown significantly and there are a number of global projects that involve foreign specialists,” Lukáš Hendrych of BDO, one of the world’s largest accountancy networks, told the website Novinky.cz. Most of these business executives are based in Prague and Brno.

Over the past 13 years, from 2004 until the end of 2017, the number of foreign employees in the Czech Republic increased by 379 thousand. More than 80 percent of the foreign workforce is made up of unqualified workers from the former Eastern bloc, such as Ukraine and Romania, who are mostly employed in the building industry and production.

The number of Slovaks working in the Czech Republic has more than tripled since 2004 to 125,000.

“Many young Slovaks study at Czech schools and then they find work here. It is easy for them to settle down here, since the language and culture are very similar,” Hendrych told Novinky.cz.