Central Europe is short on workers, and governments are split on how much to rely on foreign workers to fill the gap.
Czechia, Poland and Slovakia are widening recruitment from countries as distant as the Philippines and India. Hungary has gone the other way, closing its guest-worker channel in June 2026.
The common problem runs deeper than headcount. Employers say available workers often don’t match the jobs they need filled, by skill or location.
Ticking Czech clock
Czechia’s gap is already wide. The Czech Chamber of Commerce estimates the labour market is short of about 250,000 people.
It is set to grow. A Moore CR study published in September estimates a shortfall of about 500,000 workers by 2045, as cohorts born in the 1970s retire after 2030.
Nearly 200,000 babies were born each year in that decade. In 2025, fewer than 80,000 were.
“This is a long-term structural problem,” says Chamber spokesman Jan Sotona.
Foreigners already fill much of the gap. Almost 1 million were working in Czechia at the end of 2025, nearly triple the figure a decade earlier, in a population of under 11 million.
“Without foreign workers, even basic services cannot operate,” Chamber president Zdenek Zajicek has warned. With fewer arrivals from Romania, Poland and Bulgaria, employers now look to the Philippines, Mongolia, Kazakhstan and India.
Prague’s permit promise
Prime Minister Andrej Babis’s ANO party has pledged to bring in 100,000 qualified foreigners by 2030. It governs alongside Freedom and Direct Democracy (SPD), which takes a “Czech first” stance.
ANO plans to digitise applications and simplify recognition of foreign diplomas. It promises permits within 30 days for highly qualified workers and 60 days for medium- and low-skilled staff.
Employers welcome the plans but warn against focusing only on high-skilled labour. Sotona points out that Czech firms compete for staff with companies in Germany and Poland, and wants “a legal, transparent and predictable system”.
Radovan Hauk of Moore CR sees a deeper limit. Most foreign workers come for two years, he notes, and only a small fraction stay or start families.
Budapest shuts gate
Hungary has moved in the opposite direction. About 100,000 guest workers are employed there, just 2.4% of the workforce, compared with an EU average of 8.3%.
Viktor Orban’s government, which lost power in April 2026 after 16 years, opened an agency recruitment scheme in 2024. In 2025, it narrowed the scheme to three non-Muslim Asian countries.
The Tisza party campaigned to halt the inflow, arguing that foreign workers push wages down. In June, its new government ended recruitment of up to 35,000 guest workers a year, most of them from the Philippines.
The remaining route, a residence permit for employment, often takes nine to 12 months. Akos Kalmar of employers’ group BusinessHungary says companies “are already feeling the consequences”, and some investments have stalled.
Master Good owner Laszlo Barany threatened in the summer to scrap a 120-billion-forint (about €330 million) meat-processing plant unless guest workers were allowed in. He told Telex.hu that some shifts start at 02:00 in plants kept below 10°C all day.
Critics accused the company of trying to hold wages down. Kalmar counters that guest workers often protect Hungarian jobs, and calls claims that foreigners earn more legally impossible.
The government plans to bring 300,000–400,000 inactive Hungarians into work. Kalmar says reserves rarely match companies’ needs in location, skills, or motivation.
Poland’s moving target
Poland’s figures look calmer, with registered unemployment at 5.8% and 98,700 vacancies. The official barometer still forecasts shortages in 17 professions in 2026, from nurses to welders and truck drivers.
The hardest gaps sit in “lower-skilled services and manual work,” according to Pawel Kaczmarczyk, director of the University of Warsaw’s Centre of Migration Research. Many vacancies, he adds, are filled without ever reaching the open market.
Foreign workers made up 8.2% of those registered for social insurance at the end of June 2026, about 1.34 million people. Ukrainians account for 67.2%.
Many Ukrainians who settled have moved out of the toughest sectors. Migrants who integrate “sometimes lose interest in the sectors where, paradoxically, they are most needed,” Kaczmarczyk observes.
Employers now recruit from India, Bangladesh and Pakistan. Some farms and hospitality firms have stopped advertising jobs in Polish because nobody applied.
Middlemen take charge
That shift has fed a sprawling agency market. Poland’s register lists more than 7,300 employment agencies, and some workers from Nepal or India arrive owing thousands of dollars in recruitment and travel costs.
“Employers helped create a system that eventually slipped out of their control,” explains Kamil Matuszczyk, a researcher at the same centre. When Warsaw barred agencies under two years old from recruiting foreigners, dozens of established ones went up for sale.
Kaczmarczyk proposes “white lists” of agencies with proven standards. He also notes that many Ukrainians with university degrees work below their qualifications.
Slovakia’s slow welcome
Slovakia employs a record 150,000 non-nationals, about 6% of the workforce. Three-quarters come from outside the EU, from Ukraine and Serbia to Vietnam, the Philippines and Nepal.
Foreigners are “an essential part” of the labour market, says Jakub Zagora of Kosice IT Valley. Most cluster around Bratislava and western Slovakia, he adds, while demand nationwide outstrips supply.
Public opinion is wary. A JobsIndex survey found about two-thirds of Slovak employees see foreigners as a potential threat to their jobs.
Employers “still see more problems and obstacles than benefits,” Martin Szabo of Alma Career Slovakia says.
Revolving door
In all four countries, the economic case for foreign labour has yet to win political consensus. Short stays in Czechia and sector-hopping in Poland mean employers keep returning to ever more distant source countries.
Hungary’s restriction now runs alongside its neighbours’ expansion, with Budapest relying on an inactive workforce that employers say does not fit their needs. BusinessHungary is still negotiating with the government, and Master Good has not confirmed whether it will proceed with the plant.
In Prague, ANO’s 30- and 60-day permit pledge and its 2030 target remain unfulfilled. Poland has yet to act on calls for tighter oversight of recruitment agencies.