Does a list of indispensable government employees mean the state plans to fire those not on the list and give their jobs to migrants? No, that's not true: According to news reports, the government is collecting data on the public sector labor force in order to estimate the minimum capacity needed to run the state, but there are no plans to replace Hungarian government workers with foreign workers.
The claim appeared in a video on TikTok (archived here) published by @nemazm1tv on August 21, 2023. The caption (translated from Hungarian to English by Lead Stories staff) is:
Dismissals are going on, and then migrants will sit in the positions!
This is what the post looked like on TikTok at the time of writing:
(Source: TikTok screenshot taken on Thu Aug 24 16:52:07 2023 UTC)
The post claims that worker dismissals are going on now to make room for foreign workers without providing evidence or a source for this claim. It shows a video clip from a news program on channel ATV regarding a report by Hungarian news agency Telex about a supposed list of indispensable state workers.
The report by Telex claimed that the state list would show which state employees were considered indispensable. The data collected would be used to estimate the minimum number of workers needed to run the state, the report said. The article says the government is setting up a list of people who should stay at work in case of a general conscription and martial law. According to the website of the Ministry of Defense a similar list already exists, which employers are required to update every three years.
Hungary currently has a labor shortage, with 83,000 empty job posts, the Central Statistical Office reported in the first quarter of 2023. The number has been growing since 2020, reaching a peak in 2022 with 98,688 job openings.
While the number of foreign workers in the country is growing, with 55,000 immigrants settling in Hungary in 2022, Prime Minister Viktor Orban announced that 500,000 new workers would be needed in the country over the coming years, but there is no evidence that foreign workers are recruited specifically to state-run companies.
