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Hungary Work Force
In 1987 about 6.1 million of Hungary's 10.6 million
people
were of working age, and 4.9 million were active earners.
The
number of active earners was expected to remain between
4.8 and
5.1 million in the 1990s. The state sector employed about
3.5
million persons (70.5 percent of the country's active
earners) in
1986; the cooperative sector, approximately 1.2 million
(23.8
percent); and the private sector, about 266,000 (5.4
percent).
According to foreign observers, official statistics
underestimated the size of the private sector because they
included only persons who reported their private activity
as
their primary occupation. In the late 1980s, approximately
75
percent of Hungary's families earned extra incomes working
"sideline activities" to supplement the wages and benefits
that
family members earned in the state and cooperative
sectors. These
activities, which were mostly agricultural, generated
productive
man-hours equal to about 20 percent of the man-hours
worked each
year in the socialist sector (the state and cooperative
sectors).
While sideline activities contributed to family incomes
and the
nation's productivity, they also deprived the socialist
sector of
the energy and attention that workers would otherwise
direct to
their primary jobs.
In 1987 workers in industry numbered just over 1.5
million,
or 31.2 percent of the active earners, including 57,600 in
the
private sector (see
table 5, Appendix). When rapid
industrialization began in 1949, only 19.4 percent of the
labor
force worked in industry. Hungary had about 19.3 percent
of its
labor force or 890,000 active earners working in the
agricultural
sector in 1987, including about 846,100 in the socialist
sector
and 43,900 in the private sector. The number of persons
actually
engaged in private agriculture was much higher, however,
because
government statistics counted collective- and state-farm
members
who worked household plots only as members of the
socialist
sector. The number of workers in the agricultural sector
has
steadily declined since the war. In 1949 about 53.8
percent of
the labor force worked in agriculture; this figure dropped
to
24.4 percent in 1970 and to 19 percent in 1980, but it
rebounded
slightly to 19.3 in 1987 as agricultural enterprises began
employing more workers in nonagricultural activities. The
service
sector accounted for 21.3 percent of the active work force
in
1986; commerce, 10.5 percent; transportation and
telecommunications employed 8.3 percent; and construction,
7
percent.
Data as of September 1989
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