BUDAPEST, March 12 (Reuters) - Hungarians should think twice before they move to the United Kingdom seeking work because the economic crisis has made it virtually impossible to find jobs there, Hungary's Foreign Ministry warned on Thursday.
"The Foreign Ministry recommends that all those who want to travel to the UK with the aim of finding jobs should carefully consider their plan...as the UK is hit harder by the crisis than other EU states," ministry spokesman Lajos Szelestey said in a statement.
Since the accession of eight eastern European countries to the European Union in 2004, hundreds of thousands of east Europeans have moved to western Europe, many of them to the UK, in search of higher wages and a better life.
The ministry said the chances now of finding a job in the UK are "down to zero" and more and more employers are refusing to pay wages in full or violating contracts in other ways.
"The vast majority of employers in the UK abide fully by the law and honour their contracts with their staff and workers in full," the British Embassy in Budapest said in a statement.
An increasing number of Hungarians are asking Hungary's embassy in London for help paying travel costs home because they have lost their jobs or cannot find work, the ministry said.
Britain's economy shrank 1.5 percent in the last quarter of 2008, its sharpest rate of contraction since 1980.
In Hungary, industrial output fell an annual 22.9 percent in January, led by a plunge in export sales, and fears are that the export-driven economy will contract more than the government forecast of 3.5 percent this year. (Reporting by Krisztina Than; Editing by Louise Ireland)