Hungary’s Work-Based Society Is a Cheap-Labor Machine
Behind the rhetoric of dignity lies inflation, falling wages, and the quiet collapse of the middle class.
Orbán’s “work-based society” masks austerity as morality—a system of meager sick pay, three months’ unemployment, and low-wage public works sold as dignity. Since 2015, inflation has soared past wages and GDP, while the forint weakens and people work more yet own less. It’s treadmill economics: control disguised as virtue. The alternative is simple—fair pay, real protection, and a safety net that lifts, not punishes.
When Viktor Orbán announced Hungary’s munkaalapú társadalom—the “work-based society”—he framed it as a moral rebirth.
No more dependency. No more welfare waste. Just the dignity of labor, the discipline of production, and the promise that every forint would be earned.
A decade later, the numbers tell a very different story.
The Myth of Moral Renewal
The rhetoric was seductive: after the “debt-based,” “welfare-dependent” chaos of the 2000s, Hungary would rebuild itself through discipline and productivity.
In practice, munkaalapú társadalom meant dismantling an already fragile social net and reframing poverty as personal failure.
Unemployed people get three months of support—the shortest benefit period in the EU. Sick workers face suspicion and low compensation. If you earn €2,000 a month and fall ill, you quickly fall behind: the allowance is meager, while the Constitution expects adult children to support their parents. Welfare recipients are pushed into state-run public works (közmunkaprogramok) at below-minimum wages, doing tasks with little training, little dignity, and no path to advancement.
Message received: work isn’t a right—it’s a punishment.
The Data: Work More, Own Less
Eurostat shows that since 2015 inflation has risen nearly 70%, outpacing median income growth (≈50%) and far exceeding GDP per capita gains (≈20%). Meanwhile, the forint is about 25% weaker against the euro.
Put plainly: people are working, but getting poorer—at least half the country, for sure.
The chart says it all: inflation rockets upward while wages trudge behind; GDP growth flatters on paper; the currency slides. This isn’t the triumph of a work-based society—it’s the exhaustion of one.
The “Workfare” Illusion
The munkaalapú társadalom was never an economic policy—it was a moral campaign. Its core logic is punitive: those who don’t work don’t deserve to live decently. Hence the 90 days of unemployment support. Hence the bare-bones sick pay, the underfunded welfare system, and public works that keep people busy but not upwardly mobile.
It’s austerity disguised as virtue—precarity recast as patriotism.
In this system, “work” isn’t empowerment. It’s control.
The Vanishing Promise of Middle-Class Life
In 2015, a Hungarian worker could buy more, save more, and travel with less anxiety about the exchange rate. Today, even with higher nominal wages, inflation and FX erosion have eaten most real gains.
Middle-income households are running harder just to stay in place. Teachers, nurses, IT staff, and factory workers share the same paradox: they’re “employed,” yet perpetually insecure.
What the government calls “labor-market success” feels, at street level, like treadmill economics.
The Workfare Trap
Public work (közmunka) is the model’s emblem: people are technically employed, yet trapped on poverty wages and reliant on local mayors who decide their fate. Dependency didn’t vanish—it was nationalized.
A real work-based society would reward productivity and protect workers. Orbán’s version punishes weakness and rewards loyalty.
Inflation as Silent Expropriation
The government loves to boast about full employment—but not about what those jobs pay or what value they add. In Experienced, Educated, and Erased — No Country for Old Minds? I showed that less than 0.3% of listed vacancies required higher education and more than ten years’ experience. The pipeline isn’t for high value-added work or highly skilled candidates.
In this “work-based society,” inflation functions as a hidden tax—a silent expropriation that transfers purchasing power from workers to elites. The central bank prints optimism, the government prints propaganda—but grocery receipts tell the truth.
Savings are gone. Even middle-income families now rely on grandparents, side gigs, or remittances from abroad to stay afloat.
The munkaalapú társadalom promised dignity through labor. Instead, it replaced solidarity with suspicion and security with servitude.
A society cannot build its future on exhaustion. Work, in itself, is not a moral value. Dignity comes from fairness, not from fatigue.
Austerity Rebranded as Virtue
In Western Europe, austerity is a policy.
In Hungary, it’s a worldview.
The munkaalapú társadalom replaces solidarity with shame and turns systemic failure into personal guilt.
If you’re poor, you didn’t work hard enough.
If you’re sick, you didn’t take care of yourself.
If you’re unemployed, be grateful for three months of benefits—and a fluorescent vest to rake leaves.
This isn’t social policy. It’s moral theater.
The Real Alternative: A Value-Based Society
Hungary doesn’t need a “work-based” society. It needs a value-based one—where contribution is rewarded, vulnerability isn’t criminalized, and inflation doesn’t devour effort.
The opposite of a “work-based society” isn’t laziness—it’s a society that values people:
Work is fairly compensated.
Social support isn’t treated as sin.
Security isn’t traded for loyalty.
Productivity flows from inclusion, not coercion.
The safety net isn’t a hammock—it’s a trampoline.
The munkaalapú társadalom was never about work. It was about control.
And it has worked spectacularly—just not for the people who do the work.
Postscript
When Orbán boasts that Hungary is “Europe’s most work-oriented nation,” he’s not wrong. Hungarians do work more hours for less pay than almost anyone else in the EU. They do take fewer sick days, accept shorter unemployment support, and endure inflation and currency devaluation that would topple governments elsewhere.
But that’s not a triumph of national character.
It’s proof that a government can sell austerity as morality—and exhaustion as patriotism.
Disagree? Good. I don’t write to be right—I write to be tested. Bring your “Tenth Man” view, your sharpest counterpoint, or even a quiet doubt. Sometimes the most useful critique is the one that unsettles my own thinking.
Don’t forget to subscribe for more Critical Hungary Insights!