Innovation and real labour force in rural areas as a basis of future rural development

The common West European problems are the following: population ageing and proportional (and often also absolute) decline of the labour force. These deficits are partially covered by the East-West migration flows for work, but these labour force movements generate similar problems on the labour markets in the origin countries. The external migration flows for jobs from CEE countries to West European countries are motivated, on one hand, by the lack of occupational alternatives in the origin countries, and on the other hand by the significant differences between the labour remuneration in the origin countries and the West-European countries, as main destinations of the circulatory migration flows. The job deficit in the CEE countries is much stronger in the rural areas, so that the pressure upon the occupational migration is greater for the active population in these areas. The rural entrepreneurship capacity to bring an active contribution to sustainable economic growth, to provide jobs and to contribute to the general welfare increase has an optimizing trend when: the total number of entrepreneurs is great and increasing; the share of employers in the employed population is on the rise; the young people are well represented in the age structure of employers. The main question that remains is the following: what is the innovation level and who will be the innovators in the rural area in the CEE countries as long as the migration level to the West-European countries remains high? As a consequence, the following question arises: what is the real available labour force in the rural area on which the economy can rely in the CEE countries, both in statistical and practical terms?As a result of this study, the approximate determination of the innovation level, of the real labour force in the rural area and of the interdependencies between these two indicators is expected, under the conditions of a strong migration phenomenon.