2022 was a year of high inflation, which manifested itself in increased pressure from employees for higher wages. Photo: Freepik.
Brno, 13 Dec (BD) – In 2022, wages increased the most for IT workers in regions outside Prague and Brno, as well as accountants, welders and electricians, according to data from the Grafton Recruitment agency.
While in the case of IT workers, it was a question of wages rising to meet pay levels in Prague, the other professions saw their wages rise mainly due to a lack of applicants with their qualifications. Vacancies for Java Developers, IT security specialists, welders, electricians, accountants and business services experts with knowledge of Nordic languages take the longest to fill. On the other hand, applicants for the positions of receptionists and office assistants can be found practically immediately.
2022 was a year of high inflation, which manifested itself in increased pressure from employees for higher wages. Even if employers could not afford to raise wages across the board, they could not avoid it for some positions. The biggest jumps in pay were for people from the regions, whose employers, due to the boom in remote work, brought their wages up to the level of Prague and Brno, in some cases meaning a 40% wage increase.
“Remote work has brought interesting job opportunities to all IT specialists in the Czech Republic,” said Martin Malo, director of Grafton Recruitment and Gi Group. “They can now work for a Prague wage even from the most remote village at the other end of the country. Employers from the regions must therefore keep up with Prague and offer their people competitive conditions, otherwise there is a risk that they will run away to better offers.” He added that this was true above all for Java Developers, specialists in IT security, IT analysts and Salesforce developers.
Wages also grew at an above-average rate for accountants, welders, electricians, and practically all junior positions in Brno. Most often, this was growth in the range of 10-20%.
Boom in new job roles
As every year, new positions emerge with new technologies and modern work practices. This year there was an increased demand for BIM modellers, automatists, and robotic software trainers.
2023 is expected to be a year of job hopping and increased layoffs, and will most likely also bring further wage growth, especially for the hardest-to-fill positions. “We certainly cannot expect an across-the-board increase that would correspond to the rate of inflation, but employers will have to dig deep into their pockets, at least in the case of difficult-to-fill vacancies and key workers,” said Malo.
The market can thus expect a boom in so-called job hopping, when people jump from job to job in an attempt to improve themselves financially. This phenomenon is already visible today in such sectors as manufacturing and construction, but is expected to spread to other sectors, especially those which are growing and struggling with a lack of staff.
“The fight for workers will continue across all sectors,” said Malo. “Even though 2023 will bring more redundancies in some areas than we have been used to in previous years. Of course, it will depend on the further development of prices, especially in the energy sector, and on the rate of inflation. In general, however, the more energy-intensive sectors will be more prone to layoffs.” He noted, however, that strong recruitment activities will continue in IT and corporate services. Overall, the unemployment rate is expected to rise slightly to around 4-4.5 %.
Poland as an example
The lack of qualified workers is not just visible in the Czech labour market, but across Central Europe; Slovakia, for example, also saw its lowest ever unemployment rate this year. Of all the Central European countries, Poland has been able to respond best to the lack of candidates, by simplifying rules related to economic migration, and thereby attracting workers with the necessary qualifications to the country. Thanks to this, Poland has also seen an uptick in the number of new investors, regardless of the relatively unstable political environment.
Malo believes that Poland could become a good example for the Czech government, which has so far been relatively passive about the situation, as a result of which the Czech Republic is losing competitive advantage over neighbouring countries. “According to Czech employers, the priority for next year should be the redirection of approved quotas in the Qualified Employee Program from Ukraine to other countries. This is the only way they will manage to find the necessary human resources and reduce unhealthy tendencies in the Czech labour market,” he concluded.
