Labour Adjustment and Efficiency in Hungary

Transition from socialist to market economy brought drastic changes to the Hungarian labour market. Employment fell by 1.6 million, i.e., by more than 25% during the early transition period, while unemployment jumped from practically nil to over 14% within four years. The rapid economic growth of the recent years could only create relatively few jobs, even though the unemployment rate continuously declined, and is less than 6% since 2001. This paper describes labour adjustment after the transitional recession, and its relationship to corporate efficiency during the recovery period, based on a panel of medium-sized and large Hungarian firms. Labour demand is also related to firm level productive efficiency.