As many as 45.6% of the Slovak labour force worked in the high-tech or medium-tech field in 2017, according to the data released by the Slovak Statistical Office last week. Thus, the country has moved ahead over the past decade into the position of leader of the Visegrad Four region (V4: Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia). Hungary ranked behind Slovakia with a 44.9% share, followed by the Czech Republic (44.7%) and Poland (37.2%). Slovakia also achieved the steepest improvement over the past decade in the volume of labour force employed in the "high-added value" segments, which has gone up by 5.8 percentage points since 2008.
However, in other parameters, Slovakia lags behind its neighbours, for example, the country fared the worst in region in the volume of labour force employed in research and development. Also problematic is the employment of graduates, with only 87.6% of men and 75.6% percent of women capable of landing jobs in the first three years after leaving school.
