The structural economic development in the cyclical period of the last decade has generated profound social changes in the Member States of the European Union, including Hungary. High-technology developments, the rise of digitalisation and the demand for highly skilled employment have had a marked impact on changes in labour market needs. The question arises: how do the changing employment trends generated by the development of the national economy affect the situation of sub-national regions? Do regional disparities increase as a result of the absorptive effects of central regions? In our study, we investigated spatial economic correlations that focused on spatial differentials in the social strata working in high-prestige occupations. Our results show that these processes have led to the identification of areas which can be defined as employment centres, since the spatial location of these areas will be an inevitable factor in the development of various spatial development strategies. In our study, we conducted our analyses using occupational statistics from the 2011 and 2022 Hungarian censuses at LAU1 territorial level. The data set used was restricted and compiled on the basis of the Hungarian Standard Classification of Occupations (HCSO-08) of the Hungarian Central Statistical Office. The main results of our analysis also show that human capital is a crucial factor in promoting economic development and reducing regional disparities, as the social structure needed to avoid the middle-income trap is considered a strategic factor in these employment trends.
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Lőrinc et al. (2024) studied this question.