1st ICAI 2020

International Conference on Automotive Industry 2020

Mladá Boleslav, Czech Republic

WLTP. A decline in the number of registrations then followed because of this ‘front- loading’. In the EU, the decline in registrations stabilized in the last months of 2019. The CZSO publishes data on employment (the average number of registered employees) and Gross Value Added (GVA is defined as output at basic prices minus intermediate consumption at purchaser prices; it is the balancing item of the national accounts’ production account. in industrial sectors including the manufacture of motor vehicles, trailers, and semi-trailers on a quarterly basis with a roughly four- to five-month lag time. Data for the third quarter of 2019 was available in February 2020. The unemployment rate in Czechia is the lowest in all of the European Union and has remained steady at about 2%. According to figures from the Labour Office of the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs, the number of job vacancies has exceeded the number of job seekers since April of 2018. In January 2020 the gap was more than 111,000, with 341,400 vacant positions and 230,000 job seekers. The situation in the job market is therefore rather tight. The automotive industry is operating at the margins of its productive capacity because it lacks the employees for any more intensive growth. Intensive investment into robotics and automation could allow for greater growth, but some new investment will have to go instead to the changes that the automotive industry is now undergoing. Decreases in the cost of production and increased product variety are at the heart of the competitive strategies of vehicle manufacturers (Pavlínek P., 2018). Employment grew strongly in the automobile industry in earlier times of economic growth because the average wage of employees in the sector is about a third more than the average wage in Czechia. According to figures from the CZSO, in Q1-3 2019, the average gross monthly nominal wage per actual person grew by 6.6% to CZK 39,581 in the motor vehicles, trailers, and semi-trailers manufacturing sector. In 2019, the average monthly wage among firms that were members of the AIA grew year on year by 6% to 43,949. It now exceeds the average wage in Czechia (and that of the manufacturing sector as a whole, which is the same as the average wage for the entire national economy) by more than 30%. The economic effects of the automotive industry largely depend on its capital intensity of production, especially in terms of wages and value added per employee, which tend to increase with the increasing capital intensity of production and vice versa (Pavlínek P., 2016). The number of persons employed by the member firms of the AIA grew only slightly year on year in 2019, by one percent, to 133,378. The number of persons employed in the automobile industry continually increased up to the beginning of the year 2008, when it exceeded 161,000 according to CZSO statistics. As a result of the economic crisis there was a significant decline of about 15% in employment, but in the fourth quarter of 2009 it began to increase again, with only a small decline in 2013. In the European Union the financial crisis in 2008 led to major restructuring, but not to domestic consolidation of production chains (Timmer P.M., 2015). In 2018 the number of employed persons in the automotive sector was 181,415. During the first three quarters of 2019 the year on year growth in that number (compared to the same period in 2018) stagnated at about 180,000 persons. The automotive industry in Czechia makes an important contribution to employment. The number of persons employed in the industry in 2000 was 8% of the total number employed in the

160