Slovak Entrepreneur Relies on Work Abroad to Survive in Rural Eastern Slovakia

A businessman who relocated from a city to a small village in eastern Slovakia says his household could not survive without taking on seasonal or informal work abroad. The case highlights a broader economic reality facing many rural Slovak communities, where local job opportunities and income levels are insufficient to sustain families, pushing residents to seek additional earnings in Western European countries. The reliance on foreign work — often informal or short-term contract jobs known in Slovak as 'fušky' — remains a common survival strategy in economically disadvantaged regions of eastern Slovakia, where wages and local business prospects lag significantly behind the country's western regions.