“The labor shortage is a reality both in Romania and in Europe, and not from yesterday to today, but maybe even within 10 years. The solutions will be two large and broad, namely the import of labor from outside the EU and digitization. Unfortunately, the future does not sound very good in terms of the number of potential employees, because we all know that this is not only a Romanian problem, but also a European one,” explained the State Secretary of the Ministry of Labor and Social Justice. Cristian Vasilkouyi on Monday at an event organized by News.ro

Vasylkou also specified that the youth of the modern generation are more demanding and do not accept any job and any salary. “The youth of today’s generation is more demanding and no longer wants to do any work and for any money. And this is because they also know that there is a shortage in the labor market, you know very well that there are companies that are recruiting even from high school, let alone college,” said Christian Vasilkoiu.

The State Secretary also talked about the areas where there are problems with the lack of labor force.

“Secondly, another category where we have a low employment rate is women, because in Romania, especially in rural areas, there are still families where the woman mainly takes care of the household and brings up the children, and here we have a deficit. . The problem with the deficit is that we have unemployment in rural areas very far from the county municipalities or big cities where the jobs are. We have no unemployment in the municipalities. There is no such thing, it tends to zero. There is no unemployment in large areas. And then a person puts on the balance, for example, we count among the unemployed those who are self-employed in rural areas at a distance of 50 to 100 kilometers from municipalities and the center of the district,” the state secretary explained.

He added that it is not profitable for such a person to work at a long distance from home.

“And a man balances like this: I have to wake up at 5 in the morning or 4 in the morning, get on the bus, drive an hour or two to work, sit all day, where there is water, food costs and everything. , return at 5-6 in the afternoon to be home by 10. Why would I stay away from home? For a minimum salary of 2000 lei? Well, it doesn’t make money, because when he is self-employed, he has some chickens, he has a pig, he has tomatoes, cucumbers, potatoes, if he went to work, he wouldn’t be able to grow them all, but the salary, which he gets by going to work, he does not even help them buy what he gets himself. And then in these areas there are these people who are unemployed and hardly employed, because demand and supply do not match,” Christian Vasilkoiu also stated.

The labor shortage in Romania was 145,000 people and, in the absence of immediate measures, it could reach 224,000 in 2026, according to an analysis carried out by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Romania at the request of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham).

The most affected sectors, according to the PwC study, are the manufacturing industry, the transport sector and the information and communication sector, with an average of more than 22,000 people – a shortage in 2022.

In addition, according to the official data of the National Institute of Statistics (INSSE), 70% of the total labor shortage in Romania is concentrated in developed regions – Bucharest-Ilfov and such counties as: Cluj, Timișoara, Arad, Brasov, Sibiu and Prahova. .

What needs to be done to cover the labor shortage

AmCham Romania representatives also highlighted a series of recommendations for immediate and political intervention to address the labor shortage problem identified at the European Union (EU) level, namely:

• attraction of new human resources by raising wages and living conditions, as well as by creating an active migration policy that combines systems of recognition of qualifications and abilities, anti-discrimination policy and the involvement of the diaspora;

• increasing the use of the available workforce, as well as stimulating idle resources by removing labor market barriers for various groups, such as the long-term unemployed or the inactive population.