JMHZ from 1 April 2026: how reporting a foreign worker's start date changes

From 1 April 2026, according to the Czech Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs (MPSV), reporting on the employment of foreign nationals runs only through the Unified Monthly Employer Report, JMHZ. The duty is discharged through the Employee Registration process, REGZEC. The notice of a foreign national starting work must be filed in advance, before the work begins.

What changes and who it covers

Until the end of March 2026 the duty was met on a separate form addressed to the regional branch of the Czech Labour Office. From 1 April 2026 MPSV operates a single channel, JMHZ, and a foreign national's start is recorded in it through REGZEC. The employer sends no separate notice outside the system; the filing sits inside the same monthly structure that carries the rest of the employee data.

The duty covers foreign nationals without free access to the labour market. MPSV names these as holders of an employee card, a Blue Card, an intra-corporate transferee card, and holders of a work permit. EU citizens, their family members and foreign nationals with permanent residence fall outside it. The distinction runs on the residence title rather than on nationality, and that is what an inspection looks at.

A second duty survives alongside the start report: the employer must notify the vacancy to the regional branch of the Czech Labour Office. The same applies to a temporary work agency assigning a foreign national to a user undertaking. The vacancy notification and the start registration are two separate acts at two separate moments, and neither substitutes for the other.

The timeline for one arrival

The table below sets out when each act belongs in one worker's calendar.

The expensive word in that table is "before". MPSV treats a failure to notify before work begins as the offence of undeclared work under Act No. 435/2004 Coll. on employment. It is a statutory offence that the labour inspectorate penalises in the hundreds of thousands of crowns, assessed per person.

The practical consequence on a shift floor is specific. The worker lands on Sunday, HR plans to finish the paperwork on Monday, and the supervisor puts him on the line on Monday morning. Registration goes through on Monday afternoon, after work had begun. The offence is complete at that point, whatever the validity of the employee card and the contract. The start date in the system and the actual first day on site have to match, and the order is fixed: report first, work after.

Who reports in an agency assignment

In a temporary assignment the duties split and both sides need to know the split. The work agency is the employer, so it files the start registration, and the vacancy notification to the regional branch of the Czech Labour Office also sits with it. The user undertaking, the plant the worker is assigned to, is not the employer, but it is the site an inspection visits, and it answers for the assigned worker doing exactly the work at exactly the place named in the permit.

A gap between the job named on the document and the work actually done is the second most common inspection finding. A Czech employee card is tied to a specific post, employer and place of work; moving someone between plants or changing the type of work is not an internal organisational step but a fact to be handled under the residence rules with the Czech Ministry of the Interior and reflected in the report.

Complying costs nothing, since JMHZ access is part of ordinary electronic communication with the state. Failing to comply costs a fine under the employment act, plus the risk of the employer looking unreliable in later proceedings where clean tax standing and compliance history are assessed. Placement conditions in an economic migration programme are set out in the Qualified Employee Programme in 2026, and appointment availability at Czech missions in employee card quotas by consulate.

One organisational detail decides whether the duty is met on time: who inside the company holds JMHZ access, and whether they are reachable on the arrival date. Companies that keep that access with a single person tend to be caught out over the summer and around public holidays, which is exactly when group arrivals land. Two people with access and one calendar task on the arrival date cover most of the risk. The vacancy register that precedes the whole chain is described in the Czech employee card and the vacancy register, and our employer services are set out on the employers page.