Displacing professionals over the age of 45 from the labor market in Hungary causes a GDP loss of HUF 1,400-2,200 billion every year. Co-discrimination is not just an individual tragedy – it is a serious macroeconomic and corporate loss, as quantified by the latest research from The Seniors.
Displacing professionals over the age of 45 with 20-30 years of experience on the labor market is not only an HR challenge or an individual problem, but a serious macroeconomic and corporate loss. Based on The Seniors' calculations, co-discrimination in Hungary causes a GDP loss of HUF 1,400-2,200 billion every year. However, increasing the proportion of colleagues over 50 reduces turnover and improves productivity.
The "senior workforce is too expensive" argument is the result of an accounting illusion that appears to be savings in quarterly financial reports, but causes a drastic drop in profits and a serious loss of efficiency for companies over a 12-18 month time horizon, says executive coach Csilla Csillag-Csatlós.
The current operation of the Hungarian labor market suffers from serious structural problems: the gates are closed to a significant number of professionals over the age of 45, regardless of whether they previously made strategic decisions as financial, manufacturing or HR managers. The data revealed: nearly 80 percent of active job seekers do not receive any response to their applications for weeks, 74.4 percent are automatically rejected without reason, while more than 57 percent are simply classified as overqualified or too experienced after the administrative rounds.
International data clearly prove that retaining and integrating the senior workforce has measurable economic benefits. Based on OECD data, a 10 percent increase in the proportion of employees over 50 in an organization reduces turnover by 4 percent on average and increases productivity. However, in Hungarian practice, decisions are often guided by short-term accounting logic: the senior manager's higher salary is immediately visible in the monthly costs, while the new employee's training period of up to 18 months, the organization's loss of performance or the knowledge bought back at a higher price two years later remain hidden.
"Seniority is too expensive is the most unprofitable statement in the Hungarian business world. A financial director who today decides to lay off senior employees in the name of cost savings is not saving money, but taking a deferred cost on the company's neck, with a higher interest rate than the central bank would liquidate. What is now in reserve is not an outdated generation of professionals, but one of the most valuable, yet untapped, resources of the Hungarian economy." – Csilla Csillag-Csatlós, founder of The Seniors
The company-level losses generated in this way can be clearly quantified. According to the domestic professional consensus, the replacement of an intellectual managerial position costs between 33 and 200 percent of the annual salary. Replacing a single senior professional - from severance pay and the headhunter's fee to knowledge amortization to the lost capacity of the remaining colleagues - means a direct and indirect loss of HUF 11-22 million on average for a company.
Meanwhile, approximately 119,000 senior professionals are replaced annually in Hungary due to reorganization or downsizing. At the level of the corporate sector, this phenomenon means HUF 680-1,350 billion in unnecessary expenses every year. In the case of a medium-sized domestic company with 500 employees, where an average of 13 senior employees are forced to replace each year, this results in annual costs of HUF 170-200 million and a negative EBITDA effect of 7-13 percent.
Managing the situation requires a fundamental change of attitude. Releasing the generation over 45 years of age back into the labor market is essential, not on social grounds, but as a matter of business common sense, as the experience, crisis resistance and decision-making ability they represent are competencies that neither junior workforce nor artificial intelligence can replace.
Source: HRPortal.hu – June 1, 2026 | Based on a survey by The Seniors (May 20-22, 2026, sample of 636 people)