BRAIN DRAIN – BRAIN GAIN: Hungary 45 Austria or Switzerland in a similar manner. In the case of ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia, knowledge of Slovak has allowed them to participate in the Czech labour market in similar way, given that Slovak and Czech are mutually com­prehensible. In addition, the labour markets of Slovakia and Romania have both seen considerable improvements over the years, with wage levels in Slovakia actually overtaking those in Hun­gary. This has reduced incentives among ethnic Hungarians from Slovakia to seek employment in Hungary, with particular local exceptions, such as the local area of the auto-making centre of Gyõr in Hungary, which borders on southern Slovak regions with an overwhelmingly ethnic Hungarian population. Most of these migrants commute from the other side of the border and are engaged in low end production. At the end of 2013 34,000 Romanian and 9,000 Slovak citizens were registered as working in Hungary. There were also 1,500 Poles. On Hungary’s accession to the EU in 2004 the picture was very similar, with 32,000 Romanians and 7,000 Slovaks(Central Statistical Office). The other distinct group of foreign workers in Hungary is related to the strongly foreign direct investment–based character of the Hungarian economy. The country serves as a low end production base for multinational enterprises, most of the local managers of which originate from the mother company of the investor. This phenomenon constitutes a relatively large expat community of mid and top level man­agers, mostly from the countries that are the major investors in Hungary: predominantly German(1,481 citizens), but also British(905), French(650), Austrian(n.d.), US American, Ital­ian(551), and Dutch(247). This expat community, although highly educated, does not constitute a meaningful brain gain for Hungary, as they are mostly engaged in managerial func­tions at the head of their respective investments. Although dating back to 2003, Hárs finds that some 67.4 per cent of this expat community from the old EU15 had qualifications from a higher educational institution. This is unlikely to have changed significantly. There are clearly identifiable reasons for the notable absence of a large foreign labour community in Hungary. Predominant among these is the isolated nature of the Hun­garian language, which is only related to Finnish and Estonian within the EU. The substantial difficulty of mastering the local language makes it very difficult for migrant labour to target Hungary. It is also significant that Hungary has continued to have one of the lowest employment rates in the EU, which means that there is a scarcity of jobs even for local citizens. Hungary also has very low wage levels: only, Latvia, Lithuania, Bulgaria and Romania have lower wage levels in the EU. Much of central and eastern Europe is characterised by low foreign labour participation, with Slovakia and Poland posting figures that are even lower than the roughly 2 per cent of the labour force for Hungary. It can therefore be stated that Hungary is representative of the wider region of new member states, with the possible exceptions of the Czech Republic, Slovenia and Croatia, which have a higher foreign participation rate. These three countries have recent historical ties to other EU and non-EU states, and have at­tracted migrant labour from countries with which, until re­cently, they had formed a common unit and strong linguistic commonality(such as Slovaks in the case of the Czech Re­public). In contrast to the region of the new member states, southern, western and northern Europe is generally char­acteriseable by labour participation rates ranging between 5 and 10 per cent, with Austria, Switzerland and Luxembourg posting even higher figures. 5.2 BRAIN DRAIN 5.2.1 OUTWARD MIGRANT POPULATION IN GENERAL Research on labour migration repeatedly stresses that data on labour migration are relatively unreliable. This is due to the poor harmonisation and coordination between the European Commission and the member states in the collection of data. There is no objective reason why this should be so. Employees are registered in social security databases in each EU member state, which would technically enable any member state to report up to date aggregate data on foreign employees on an up-to-date basis, enabling breakdowns according to country of origin, age, and many other dimensions. Current statistics on labour migration should therefore be regarded as methodologically sound estimates rather than as exact figures. According to aggregate data, about 350,000 Hungarian citizens reside outside Hungary on a permanent basis; 280,000 of them live within the European Union, about 190,000 of whom were of employable age. This constituted about 5.3 per cent of the overall Hungarian population in 2013, which is a low number by regional comparison. Among neighbouring EU countries the corresponding figure in the same year was 6.1 per cent for Austria, 6.5 per cent for Slovakia, 7.7 per cent for Slovenia and 16.6 per cent for Romania.(Neighbouring non-EU countries posted even higher numbers: Ukraine 12.3 per cent, Serbia 18.4 per cent). EU countries further afield, such as Bulgaria(18.9 per cent), Poland(8.5 per cent) or Lithuania(16 per cent) also posted much higher numbers. Only the Czech Republic shows a lower migrant ratio, at around 4 per cent. Although the stock of Hungarian guest workers is low by international comparison, along with the southern crisis countries of Spain, Greece and Portugal, Hungary has been the fourth country from which there was a rapid increase in the number of outward labour migration between 2010 and 2013, a 78 per cent increase. There are no strong trends with regard to the gender of Hungarians living outside Hungary. There is an equal distri­bution of males and females in the group, much like in the domestic population. Outward labour migration demonstrates very clear trends according to age, however. There is a slight overrepresenta­tion of people in their twenties in this group: 25 per cent as opposed to 17 per cent within Hungary. There is a very large overrepresentation of people in their thirties: 38 per cent as opposed to 21 per cent domestically – that is, almost double. Therefore, and not surprisingly, there is a definite age dimen­sion to outward labour mobility(SEEMIG project).