Sebők, M. (2015). Comments on workforce mobility in Hungary. Modern Geográfia, 10(3), 49–67.
Geographic mobility has become a decisive factor of economic and political processes since the second half of the 20th century and, due to its variability, it is in focus of interest (Rédei, M. 2010). It has shaped into an issue requiring interpretation, and identification of processes behind the trends and investigation of their effects have become inevitable. We live in a globalized world where readiness for mobility shall become a mandatory capability in multiple respects. Unlike Hungary, where we debate whether there is mobility or not, in large countries, possibly, with many dialects, direction of geographic mobility is to be investigated. (I mean here the USA or the “Silicon Valley” type workforce saturation of the Bangalore region in India.) My research aims at reviewing the way of thinking of company executives in Hungary about workforce mobility, what supporting means they use and whether they regard as a problem that the readiness of the Hungarian people for mobility is rather poor. In my research, companies of Hungary working at regional level (NUTS2) were used as population to be investigated. An unstructured questionnaire with nine questions of different types (closed/open/structured) was sent to companies, and 119 questionnaires were returned. Due to scope limitations, only results of analysing workforce mobility-related responses are presented in this study. Research results are discussed in four aspects: ownership, company size, sectoral and geographical distribution. Research has confirmed that poor mobility as a phenomenon exists and is perceived by Hungarian employers, yet, they regard it as a problem of less than medium importance. Some figures resulting from the research: When investigating this issue from the point of view of majority owner of the companies, it can be stated that they evaluate the low-level mobility on average by 4.51 on a scale from 1 to 10. In regional aspect, low-level mobility is the largest problem in Western Transdanubia (6.1) and Southern Great Plain (5.67) while in the Northern region, it is hardly ever perceived (3.14). In terms of industries, the processing industries are the most concerned (5.55) by the low-level mobility and in respect of company size, medium-sized companies (4.97) regard it as most problematic.
Keywords: Hungary, workforce mobility, geographic mobility, migration, regional inequality