However, the overall employee number in the economy is 2% higher, having reached 4.36 million people at the end of March.
“The increases are no longer as aggressive as they used to because the boom days are over. The number of employees is increasing as a result of the development of the investments made when the economy was growing, the companies are hiring new people because they develop new business lines but it’s no longer about investments started from scratch,” said Florian Godean, country manager of recruitment and temp work group Adecco Romania, which posted more than EUR41 million revenue last year.
“An example in this regard can be the investment Daimler announced, which has had a plant in Romania for years.”
Romania’s economy lost more than 600,000 jobs during the crisis and only 100,000 were recovered last year, when the economy showed signs of a rebound.
“We would see 30% to 40% growth in the first quarter year-on-year, but in the first quarter of 2013 the growth was only 20%, which means the market has lost some steam. It’s a good thing that although the hiring pace is decreasing the total number of employees is going up,” Godean added.
The number of employees is a very important indicator for the economy of a country because the payroll taxes are a significant stream of revenue for the state budget.
Romania has 4.3 million employees (3.1 million of whom working in the private sector) and a population of 19 million, according to the partial data of the 2011 census.
The slump in foreign investment of the last few years, the consumer spending decline and companies’ need to cut costs showed in the statistics about employee numbers right away, reaching an all time low in January 2011, 4.09 million.
There were more than 8 million employees in Romania in 1990, but the deindustrialization of the country led to the loss of millions of jobs or to their shift to the informal economy.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)