Recently released unemployment figures for June in the Czech Republic give little sign of the trouble ahead, as the indicator ticked up by just 0.1 percent to 3.7 percent. The fact that it’s the highest figure since January 2018 is of little importance at this point, as analysts look down the road to try to guess what’s coming. Most seem to agree that the fall is when the jobless figures will begin to rise rapidly from the current total of 270,000. At the moment, the services industry is seeing the most layoffs, especially in the restaurant and hotel sectors as well as transportation and tourism. People who were working in these sectors in Austria, Italy, Germany and Switzerland are also showing up at local employment offices. The Ministry of Labor previously expected unemployment to jump by 5 percent to more than 8 percent. “According to our information, 7 in 10 larger companies have limited hirings and 45 percent of them have stopped it completely,” said the ministry’s boss Jana Malacova. For the moment, however, the Czech Republic continues to have among the lowest unemployment figures in the European Union.
