The development of the Czech labour market remained uncertain in Q3 2013. While the results of the Labour Force Sample Survey (LFSS) in households show that the total employment increased year-on-year, the results of the business statistics of the CZSO, on the contrary, indicate a substantial drop in the number of employees. The average registered number of employees (headcount) decreased by 48.7 thousand persons and the average registered number of employees (FTE persons) dropped by 46.3 thousand persons compared to the same quarter of the previous year.
“Small“ jobs have been increasing in numbers, which has been confirmed by long–term analyses of the LFSS. The average number of usually worked hours per employee has decreased from 41.1 to 40.5 hours/week, that is by 1.5% for the two recent years, and the share of part-time workers increased by almost a quarter. The share of employees with definite period employment contracts has been also growing substantially.
The grey zone of employment (moonlighting jobs, chaining of agreements on work, agreements on work activities, etc.), sometimes called flexible forms of employment, which provide employees with just a very low level of certainty for the future, has been expanding.
From the standpoint of respective economic activities the trend of employment seems ambiguous. According to the results of business statistics it is construction, which suffered most and in which there was a decrease in the number of jobs by 17.8 thousand that is a drop by 7.5%, year-on-year. Manufacturing and agriculture also experienced year-on-year decrease in the number of employees by 1.1% and 1.6%, respectively. The sector of services is more stable, except for accommodation and food service activities, which saw a drop by 5.9%.
The number of employees grew substantially in public administration and defence; compulsory social security by 8.7 thousand persons, which is by 3.2%. This increase did not happen in central government authorities (ministries), in which the number of employees decreased by 1.6 thousand persons. It occurred mostly in authorities at the level of regions and municipalities which number of employees rose by more than eight thousand. This was an effect of public works, subsidised from the EU funds, which gave employment to roughly ten thousand persons. In the previous year 2012 these works were provided by persons out of the registered number of employees within the so-called public service. The announced increasing of labour office capacities dedicated to combat unemployment brought a substantially smaller effect creating six hundred new jobs in Q3 2013.
The wage growth demonstrates still a very low pace. The nominal growth of the average wage by 1.3% is the fourth lowest in the recent decade. The deceleration of consumer price growth (inflation), which showed the index value of 101.2, is important for the development of the purchasing power. In previous periods a high inflation devastated increase in wages so the real purchasing power of earnings decreased, even though the nominal growth in wages was rather significant. The real wage in Q3 2013 grew by 0.1%.