Missing skills and adult training in Hungary

In a food processing plant, unprocessed raw materials are stored in a cold storage room. The temperature of the room is displayed on a digital display in degrees Celsius (°C). The temperature of the cold storage room must always remain between -20.0 °C and -15.0 °C. Do the following temperatures comply with this requirement?

-21.5°C | Yes / No

-14.9°C | Yes / No

-15.2°C | Yes / No

This simple task is one of the sample questions from the international PIAAC test, which measures the skills of the adult population.

Although the task only requires elementary math skills, according to the 2017 PIAAC survey, 18% of the Hungarian working-age population was more likely to get it wrong than to solve it correctly. This alone would indicate a serious skills gap, but according to the latest 2023 assessment, the proportion of those likely to get this task wrong has risen to 28%.

This downward trend is not unique to Hungary: over the past 5-10 years, the skills of the adult population have weakened in most developed countries, but not to the same extent. In Estonia, for example, where expanding adult education has been a priority for decades, only a slight decline has been observed.

Weaker basic skills have a direct impact on labour market opportunities: those who have difficulty understanding such a simple task are also likely to have more difficulty navigating digital or administrative work processes. Based on PIAAC data, between two people of the same age, education, and work experience, the person with stronger math ability (just one level higher on a 0-5 scale) is about 3.5 percentage points more likely to find a job and can expect to earn roughly 10 percent more in wages.

The development of skills is closely related to education, but it also depends on how well people have been able to use and keep up to date the knowledge they acquired at school in their work, in their everyday lives, or through self-education.

This is not only true for math skills. Adults with better reading comprehension skills are more likely to work, earn more, and retain their jobs. Those skilled in digital problem solving fare better in technology-intensive workplaces, while those who know English are more likely to find higher-prestige and better-paid jobs.

The job market of the coming decades will be transformed by automation and artificial intelligence, which are steadily taking over routine tasks. As a result, fewer jobs will be available to people with only basic skills, while flexibility and the ability to learn new things will become increasingly important. If a large share of the adult population is already struggles with basic maths, reading, or digital tasks, the consequences go far beyond individual careers: it could undermine the productivity and competitiveness of the entire economy.

Our study on the above issues was published in the volume entitled The Hungarian Labour Market 2023-2024. The study was based on an earlier, more detailed research report (published in Hungarian).

The Hungarian Labour Market is a regular publication of KRTK KTI. This volume was edited by Zoltán Hermann and Júlia Varga, who invited us to prepare four short studies based on our previous work.