From the 2026 budget audit
The Fund's own running costs: frozen now, to fall as the programmes wind down.
1,400 millió Ft to administer the National Employment Fund. As the public-works and training lines phase out over three to five years, the administrative apparatus that allocates them should shrink in step.
1,400 millió Ft per year — the administrative cost of running a fund that allocates 246,000 millió Ft of payroll levy into programmes the market cannot price. Frozen now; should fall as the spending it manages declines.
What you see — and what you don't
The seen: the county offices, administrators, and systems that process employment fund allocations. The unseen: the reality that an administrative office is the second-best substitute for a market price signal — and grows no less necessary until the spending it manages actually declines.
Objection
"You can't cut administration while the programmes are still running — that just makes the transition chaotic."
Answer
Agreed, which is why the operating line is frozen, not cut, during the phase-out years. Cutting administration ahead of the programmes it runs would break delivery of spending still in flight. The freeze holds it flat now; the following budget cycle — after the Start-munkaprogram and training phase-outs complete — is when the operating line falls in proportion.
Share if you think the size of the fund administrator should track the size of what it administers, not grow independently of it.
The analyst's verdict
Operational Expenditure
Rationale
This is the administrative-operating line of the Fund itself — the cost of running the NFA. As the active-spending lines above are phased out, the administrative apparatus that allocates them should shrink in parallel; a programme office is the second-best substitute for a missing market price, and as the allocations it manages decline, so should it. But cutting the operating line ahead of the programmes it administers would simply break administration of spending that is still flowing during the phase-out years. A nominal freeze holds it flat while the substantive lines wind down; the operating line should then fall in the budget cycle that follows completion of the Start-munkaprogram and training phase-outs. Real-terms erosion at typical inflation narrows it by roughly a fifth over a decade in the interim.
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