According to HR services company Jobtain, the next phase of the labor shortage will require companies to move away from traditional recruitment logic and recognize a new category of “new-collar” workers: employees who may not have conventional vocational qualifications but can learn quickly, work with technology and adapt to more complex production processes.

“If we only look at what qualifications or previous job someone has, we can easily lose good employees. If, however, we look at what they are capable of learning, an entirely different labor market opens up before us. This new-collar workforce could represent one of the hidden reserves of the Hungarian economy,” said Magdolna Mihályi, managing director of Jobtain.

Companies Look for Trainable Candidates

According to Jobtain’s 2026 Blue-Collar Benchmark survey, companies are increasingly recognizing that competing for the existing pool of skilled workers is no longer enough.

Salary expectations remain a major obstacle in skilled-worker recruitment, cited by 55% of companies, while 39% identified a lack of professional experience as a challenge.

The response, however, is no longer limited to higher wages or faster recruitment. The survey found that 59% of companies deliberately seek candidates with strong learning potential who can become stable, long-term employees through onboarding, retraining or further training.

The shift is also visible in selection criteria. Rapid learning ability, cited by 50% of companies, has become the fourth-most important factor in recruitment, only 6 percentage points behind professional experience and ahead of several traditionally important qualities, including precision and accuracy.

Blue-Collar Roles Are Changing

Jobtain said the emergence of new-collar workers does not mean the end of blue-collar employment. Physical roles will remain essential, but the competencies associated with them are changing rapidly.

“Blue-collar work is not disappearing, it is simply changing. In Hungarian factories today, there are more and more jobs that do not actually require vocational qualifications, but go beyond traditional physical work,” Mihályi said.

“This is where the new-collar employee appears: a worker who is capable of developing, handling technology, thinking in processes and quickly becoming a valuable employee through internal training,” she added.

Reliability Remains Essential

Despite the growing importance of technological openness and learning ability, Jobtain said basic competencies remain decisive.

Reliability continues to be the most important selection criterion for physical and operational positions, cited by 90% of responding companies.

This is particularly important for new-collar workers because companies can only make meaningful investments in retraining, further training and internal development if candidates are stable, motivated and can be counted on over the longer term.

“The biggest HR question of the coming years will be whether companies recognize these candidates before their competitors do,” Mihályi said.