The number of Hungarians living abroad has grown dynamically over the years, but in 2020 the growth was only 2.6 percent, that is, it almost stopped. By far, Germany remains the most popular destination among Hungarians, with 192,000 Hungarian citizens living. But for the first time in decades, their numbers are down – even if by 1,600.
Coming in second place is the United Kingdom, where 114 thousand Hungarians lived in 2020, the index also set a record in Austria, representing all 98 Hungarians.
Additional data is shown in the graph below (data from local statistical offices in Germany, UK and Austria, Eurostat data for other countries, except for Spain, where we started from the previous article for no data).
It is interesting that if we look at the ratio of Hungarian citizens to the total population, we suddenly get about 0.15 per cent in Iceland and the UK as well.
According to the data, 281,000 people live in the three countries where the platform is intended, and work there, and their number has increased by only 5,000 in one year. As in Hungary 4,700,000 Works Compared to them, the proportion of the population who went to work in the three countries is about 6 percent.
The case of Austria is otherwise unusual, in that the number of Hungarian workers and Hungarian residents is the same, although previously the number of workers was 10-30 percent higher than the number of Hungarians living there. Apparently, the main reason for this change may be that more than half of the workers have been working as passengers in recent years, but the Austrian government has withdrawn a number of benefits from passengers.
In Austria, 28 percent of registered Hungarians live in Vienna (26 thousand people), but here their number increased by only 3 percent last year. In Burgenland, 6,800 residents, which was the largest increase of 7 percent in 2020: in their case, the fact that they could only receive Austrian unemployment benefits with an Austrian address had played an important role. Many Hungarians also live in Lower Austria, which is also close to the border (14.5 thousand), where the number of Hungarian citizens has also increased very rapidly, by 16 percent.
However, there are still more Hungarians in Austria (209,000), Serbs (131,000), Romania (121,000), Turks (117,000), and Bosniaks (97,000).
According to our estimates, at least 60,000 Hungarians could work in other European countries in total, so the total number of Hungarians working abroad could be around 340,000, and this has only been increasing very slowly since 2018.
In addition to the number of Hungarians living abroad in Germany, the number of employees has also decreased, but in 2020 there were 103,985 Hungarians working there. German employment rates have been less affected by the coronavirus pandemic, with employment falling just 0.3% between 2019 and 2020. Immigrants from outside the European Union were more likely to continue working, with a 1.3 percent increase.
The number of Hungarians living in the UK has been surrounded by most question marks in recent years. In the chart below, we’ve compared several data sources. The Office for National Statistics (ONS) publishes its population survey every six months. It is based on a survey of 320,000 people Take part In a country of 68 million people. This is 0.5 percent of the population, which means that smaller people have a higher error rate. ONS also indicates the statistical margin of error with respect to the recording, which we also plotted. Another problem is that the data has been significantly modified multiple times, retrospectively.
For the number of Hungarians living in the island nation, we also referred to the results of a re-weighting of statistical models completed by August of this year. The latest methodology estimates the number of Hungarians and Hungarian citizens living there slightly lower than before.
It can be seen that in 2020, 85.5 thousand out of 114.6 thousand Hungarians were employed, 5.5 thousand were unemployed, and 8.4 thousand were inactive.*These two data come from a very small number of participants, less than 25, so they are not really accurate, they have a high degree of uncertainty – but they are broadly in line with previous years., and 15.3 thousand under the age of 16 years.
The number of Hungarians living in the UK has long been a topic of discussion in the Hungarian media, and it is not uncommon for 250,000 people to be mentioned. The difficulty is that the state does not collect, for example, the number of employees who pay social security contributions under centralized systems, a common practice in other European countries. Therefore, an attempt was made to infer data from newly claimed Social Security numbers.
However, most analyzes did not take into account that many people go to work for a shorter period of time, possibly on a temporary basis. In addition, Hungarians studying abroad played an important role in statistics.
The fact that the end of June had a huge impact on the new post-Brexit registration rules data According to the opinion, 154 thousand Hungarian citizens applied for this legal status, that is, more than 114 thousand ONS residents of Hungarian origin.
This is not to say that the stats have measured something very bad. AS ONS DETAIL explain, the main reason for this is that family members, for example, can also apply for a residence permit – this in and of itself may explain the difference between the data.
In principle, applicants were required to prove that they had been living in the UK continuously for at least five years, but this is necessary Documents A review of this shows that half a year’s residency per year is sufficient for this, and if someone had an active SSN abroad, they had a good chance of getting the status.
In addition, pre-establishment status, which is part of the aggregated data, is considered to be milder. Terms Includes: Only had to live in the UK continuously for half a year before 31 December 2020. However, 45% of all approved residence permits were*By country, however, the two categories are not published.. This also shows that nearly half of the claimants may have been those who attempted to meet this mild requirement.
Since a residence permit costs nothing if a person qualifies for it, it is easier to obtain it now. Those who cannot participate in this program will only be able to officially move to the UK and start working through a more expensive and serious procedure.
Public Life Global Migration Exiting the European Union Migration Abroad Hungarians Living Abroad Read more in the category
