Long-term unemployment in Czechia: risks for youth without a degree

By the end of August, almost 374,000 people in Czechia were out of work, and the unemployment rate reached 5%, according to data from the Czech Statistical Office. Despite the slight increase, Czechia remains among the EU countries with the lowest unemployment.

Who struggles longest to find work

Long-term unemployment is defined as a situation in which a person has been looking for work for more than a year without success. According to the Statistical Office, almost a third of all registered jobseekers are in this situation. "Almost a third of jobseekers remain without work for more than a year. About 29% of them have no more than basic education, while only 8.4% hold a master's degree or higher," said Jiří Pour, an economist at UniCredit Bank.

Young people without education are the main risk group

A recent analysis by the Statistical Office identifies several groups that face unemployment more often than others. "Among people aged 15 to 24 without secondary education, the unemployment rate in 2023–2025 approached 25%, while the EU average stayed below 21%," noted statistician Dalibor Holý.

Young people under 24 are a risk group mainly because of their lack of experience, regardless of their level of education. That said, half of them find a new job within two months, both in Czechia and across the EU as a whole.

The lower the education level, the more serious the problem. "Unemployment lasting more than a year affects around 15% of these young people in Czechia, which is a serious social problem. They risk ending up in permanent unemployment," Holý added. According to Eurostat, the situation in Czechia differs markedly from the rest of the EU: elsewhere in the bloc, long-term youth unemployment has been declining in recent years and job-search times have been shrinking, whereas in Czechia it is, on the contrary, growing.

Where people lose their jobs more often

Older generations with low levels of education face problems too. Among people in their early forties without secondary education, unemployment stood at around 11% in the EU and almost 14% in Czechia. A similar but less pronounced pattern was seen among people in their early fifties without secondary education. According to Holý, it is primarily people with low levels of education, regardless of age, who face the greatest difficulties.

A person's previous occupation also plays a major role in the risk of losing a job. Highly skilled positions traditionally have low unemployment: for officials, it stood at around 5% in the EU, with a downward trend, while in Czechia it has held steady at around 2%. Among specialists — doctors, lawyers, programmers — and technical professions, long-term unemployment holds at around 1%.

Service and trade workers face a higher risk of job loss — around 3%. The situation is worst for support staff and unskilled workers, whose unemployment ranges between 6 and 8%.

"The mismatch between jobseekers and the vacancies on offer also has a pronounced regional dimension — for example, in the Karviná and Sokolov districts there are noticeably fewer open vacancies than in Prague, the Central Bohemian Region or some other regional capitals," added Miroslav Novák, chief analyst at the investment company Citfin.

Read also: Jobs in Prague and Czechia

Source: novinky.cz