Slovakia and Czech workforce retraining

Slovakia’s education ministry announced a state‑funded programme to retrain current teachers and introduced salary subsidies along with a forthcoming automatic pay‑adjustment law to address acute shortages in subjects such as mathematics, informatics and physics. Within weeks, the focus broadened to the wider labour market. In the Czech Republic, the labour office launched a subsidy of up to 50,000 CZK for employees and self‑employed individuals to enrol in approved retraining courses tied to future job prospects. Concurrently, analysts in Slovakia reported a rapid rise in job listings requiring artificial‑intelligence skills, prompting labour‑market specialists to warn that AI competence will soon become a standard requirement and urging workers to acquire these skills now. Together the two reports illustrate a regional shift from sector‑specific teacher support toward comprehensive workforce upskilling, especially in response to growing AI‑driven demand.