A significant part of the respondents of the survey on youth in the labor market stated that they worked without legal forms: 18% worked illegally, 16% worked more hours than they had under the contract, 8% received a salary in an additional envelope from the one in the employment contract.

​Almost all young study participants aged 16-34 had at least one work experience (91%), and three-quarters of them are currently working (76%). Among young people who had at least one work experience, approximately 70% said they had more than one year of work experience, the rest had no more than one year of work experience.

Thus, approximately two-thirds of the total indicated that they had at least one employment contract for an indefinite period; a third of the total indicated that they had at least one fixed-term employment contract;

about 27% indicated that they had at least one part-time contract; 10% worked part-time; 5% through digital work platforms like UBER, Bolt, Glovo, Tazz, etc.; 9% had work experience outside of Romania.

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One of the consequences of the instability of employment in Romania is the increase in the number of jobs that the worker ends up getting. About a third of respondents have tried to make money working through an online job platform in recent years. Those who have tried to work in this field to a greater extent are mostly men and the age group of 29-34 years. This type of work is not mandatory

in large cities, the number of young people from small towns (43%) or rural areas (26%) who have tried to work through the platform is relatively similar to young people from Bucharest (35%) or cities with a county center (38%).

Problems that arose at work

First of all, young people understand that stress is one of the main problems at work. Most often, stress is caused by pressure to complete tasks within unrealistic deadlines, tasks that require overtime, organizational culture such as management’s encouragement of competition among employees for career advancement, threats of layoffs or salary cuts, interpersonal relationships at work, or unstable family-life balance. professional life.

At the level of the entire Romanian population, the situation is more dramatic than this study shows, Romanian workers are among the most stressed in Europe at work (Stoichiță 2021).

Another critical problem for the labor market in Romania, which young workers perceive as important that they face at work, is related to understaffing and overwork. Understaffing often results in employees being overloaded with more tasks than they can handle and ultimately feeling burned out.

The workload can be high in terms of quantity, complexity, pace and timing. This situation is probably best illustrated by the healthcare system in Romania, where more than half of the healthcare staff participating in the study stated during the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic that they had moderate or high levels of burnout (Stoichiță 2021).

Closely related to these issues are such issues as non-payment of overtime or non-granting of vacation days. Although there are fines in Romania for not paying overtime or statutory rest days, this was mentioned by a significant number of young people in Romania.

Another problem mentioned by young people concerns two aspects related to the structure of the economy in Romania: the low level of wages compared to the work performed, especially compared to the countries of the European Union, and difficulties in promotion. . As I mentioned in the introduction, Romania has a very large number of contracts registered with the minimum wage, to which is added another important share of wages above the minimum level, but low compared to the minimum basket for a decent life.