Czech jobless register shrinks, but long-term unemployment keeps rising

More people left Czechia’s unemployment register than joined it in September, the first time that has happened in that month since 2021, according to a new analysis by the IDEA research institute.

Labor offices registered 56,585 new job seekers during September, while 62,099 people left their records. The total fell by 5,514 to 368,377, although the registered unemployment rate remained at 5 percent for the third consecutive month.

The improvement masks a more persistent problem: the share of people registered as unemployed for longer than a year continues to grow, according to the IDEA analysis, produced at the Economics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences.

September’s departures exceeded arrivals, reversing the pattern recorded in the same month over the previous four years. Leaving the register, however, does not necessarily mean someone has started a job.

The number of advertised vacancies also increased, rising by 5,085 from August to 104,359 at the end of September.

Despite the monthly improvement, registered unemployment remained higher than a year earlier, when the rate was 4.5 percent. It was also 2.3 percentage points above September 2019, before the pandemic.

The analysis found different prospects depending on how long people had been unemployed.

Between July and September, recently registered job seekers left the register more frequently than during the corresponding prepandemic period. But the likelihood of leaving after four to six months of unemployment fell markedly.

Meanwhile, the proportion registered for more than six months remained high, and the share out of work for more than a year continued increasing. The likelihood of long-term unemployed women leaving the register nevertheless showed a visible improvement.

IDEA economist Daniel Münich said long-term unemployment was more significant for social and public policy than the overall or short-term figures alone.

Elementary and unskilled workers continued to experience the highest unemployment, followed at some distance by clerical workers and people in service and sales occupations. Specialists remained the strongest-performing occupational group.

The youngest and oldest age groups also faced higher unemployment. Among women, rates were additionally elevated during the middle years commonly associated with motherhood.

Since September 2019, registered unemployment has increased by 2.5 percentage points among women and 2.1 points among men. The gender gap remains substantial, the analysis said.

Higher qualifications have not insulated everyone from the recent slowdown. People with tertiary vocational and university education recorded a more pronounced year-on-year increase in unemployment, particularly women.

Regional differences remained stark. Ústí nad Labem had the highest registered unemployment rate at 7.3 percent, followed by Moravian-Silesia at 7 percent. Karlovy Vary recorded 5.8 percent and Liberec 5.6 percent.

Ústí also recorded the largest increase from the prepandemic benchmark, at three percentage points.

Czechia remains among the EU countries with the lowest unemployment, IDEA noted. That international comparison should be distinguished from the domestic registered rate: the measures use different definitions and are not directly interchangeable.