HIGH living costs continue to prevent Slovaks from moving for work. In turn, due to the low mobility of the workforce in Slovakia, industrial companies expect that in the future they will suffer from shortages of qualified labour.
The PSA Peugeot-Citroen car plant in Trnava, for example, has noticed a lack of interest among people from central and eastern Slovakia in working at its new plant, with only 15 percent of the 41,000 job applications it has received coming from these areas of the country, the Hospodárske noviny reported.
According to PSA's human resources director, Barbora Šípošová, over the next four years more than 50,000 new workers will be needed in the mechanical engineering and automobile industries. "The unwillingness of people to move is not only influenced by the Slovak mentality, but also by the high costs of living and the lack of housing," said Šípošová.
The property price boom in Trnava and Žilina, the sites of the country's large new auto factories, has contributed to this problem. A three-room apartment in the eastern Slovak town of Michalovce fetches about Sk670,000 (€17,910) on the market at the moment, the same price as a one-room flat in Trnava or Žilina. The situation is similar in other towns in eastern Slovakia.