Out of them 5,000 are new central and local public servant jobs, where the number of employees rose from 202,000 to 207,000 in December 2016-December 2017. The pay of these public servants rose by 20% to 3,700 lei (EUR795) in net amount per month.
“While there had been no such trend before, in the past year I’ve noticed candidates clearly targeting public sector jobs, and people used to prefer private sector jobs over public sector ones in the past. The government, of course, has been the top employer in some parts of Romania over time but I think the raises lately are turning it into a top national employer,” said Felix Toma, country manager of recruitment and personnel leasing firm Gi Group.
The salary spending in the public sector will amount to 8.9% of the GDP this year, above the 8.3% level in 2017 and 7.5% in 2016. Therefore, the public-sector salaries will have the highest share of the GDP in the past nine years, which is alarming, analysts say.
“All this trend is a repeat of what happened in 2005-2008 when the number of public sector employees rose a lot and salaries, too, using the same reasoning and political goals as today. We will probably see similar consequences at some point, let’s remember the personnel cutbacks and salary cuts, as well as the conditions of the International Monetary Fund, European Union and World Bank,” said economic analyst Aurelian Dochia.
Out of the 20,000 new hires last year, 5,000 people went to work as public servants, while the rest in healthcare and social worker jobs.
The number of employees in the public sector had reached 1.4 million at the end of the Calin Popescu Tariceanu government’s term in office. The number dropped by 200,000 during the crisis, while the Emil Boc government was in office, followed by a 25% pay cut for the entire public sector in June 2010. The financing agreements Romania had with IMF, EU and WB required the government to hire one person only if seven others left, which led to the restructuring of the system.
“We are now going the same way as before the crisis and we might see the same outcome. This will not happen in 2018 but if there is pressure to keep within a specific budget in 2019- 2020 – because we know we must watch the deficit target, there may be problems. Public sector salaries account for 9% of the GDP and one third of the total budgetary spending, and, at some point, one will wonder where the money for such salaries will keep coming from if the private sector cannot grow anymore,” Aurelian Dochia said. (EUR1=RON4.6564)
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)