One Million Foreign Workers: Czech Economy Increasingly Depends on Them
At first glance, the Czech labour market may look balanced. There are tens of thousands of job vacancies and hundreds of thousands of registered job seekers. But this picture is misleading. Employers are not looking for “available workers” in general, but for specific people with specific skills, shifts and locations. That is where the real shortage begins. The Czech labour market has been operating under this pressure for years, even if it is still often described as a temporary issue. In reality, it is becoming a structural feature of the economy, writes Tomáš Surka, managing partner of Orienta Czech. According to Labour Office data, there were more than 94,000 vacancies in the Czech Republic at the end of April 2026, alongside over 364,000 registered job seekers. On paper, this should be enough. In practice, it is not. Companies struggle to match candidates with the requirements of production, logistics, healthcare, construction and hospitality. The gap becomes clearer when looking at broader estimates. The Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs has previously indicated that employers are searching for nearly 250,000 additional workers, with around one in five companies reporting that labour shortages limit their operations. The problem is not only recruitment. In...
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