9th November 2015

Competitiveness: Employment issues: Occupational mobility in CR gradually rising?

 

Labour mobility has never been high in the Czech Republic, be it geographic or occupational. Most Czechs are unwilling to commute long distances or move house for a better job and they have three to four different employers in the course of their working life. However according to data from Czech labour offices the situation is now gradually changing, the main reason behind being discontent with salaries Radio Prague writes. A total of 26 percent of Czechs are willing to travel up to 10 kilometers to work, 50 percent would commute up to 40 kilometers and a quarter would go more than 50 kilometers a day, Prague Post adds. Almost 50% of those polled would be willing to move abroad for a job, with 30% out of them would stay abroad for more than one year, CTK/the Czech News Agency informed (in Czech). Employees from Kutná Hora seem to get the greatest benefit (in terms of salary increase) out of all those commuting to Prague, according to a table compiled by the Aktualne.cz server. According to a survey conducted by Jobs.cz and Microsoft corporation, around 15% of employees would give up a 10% increase in their salary for a possibility to work from home from time to time, CTK writes (in Czech).

According to a study (page 14) published recently by the Czech Statistical Office, 45% of respondents performed only one occupation in the course of their professional life another quarter of them did not change their profession more than twice in their lifetime. The factors behind the low occupational mobility in the Czech  Republic are the form of labor legislation/protection of employees, workers' employment values (job security valued more than career building), legislative regulation of (around 390) professions, the study indicates. Also, in general, there is no significant difference between men and women in terms of frequency of occupation changing. The results indicate that the age is more important determinant in terms of occupational mobility. In the course of one year, almost 15% of workers within the age group 15–19 changed their occupation. However, within the age group 50+, this proportion did not exceed 3%. A significant milestone appears to be the age of 25 when the rate of occupational mobility stabilizes at values not too distant from the average...Read full article. When comparing occupational mobility among educational groups, higher education institutions’ graduates stand out – on average, they changed occupation only in 3.3% of cases per year. Conversely, the highest rate of occupational mobility (4.4%) was recorded in workers with primary education as the highest level of education attained.

Members of the American Chamber of Commerce in the Czech Republic