State-owned companies will have chief executive officers recruited from among those in the private sector to turn them around and improve their efficiency. The first private sector managers will be appointed to Oltchim, Hidroelectrica, Electrica Furnizare and Romarm. This is the first project of the government to modernize public administration with the help of professionals, as requested by the International Monetary Fund.
Salaries of multinational employees will go up 6% next year, according to salary surveys, after having gone up by a similar percentage in 2011. Companies will tend to reward management employees more than any other type of employees. Banking sector salaries will stagnate, because banks’ nine months results were not that encouraging.
Average net wage will go up by almost 4.2% to 1,540 lei (almost EUR360), according to the fall forecast of the 2011-2015 period published on the National Forecasting Commission’s website. As of January 1, 800,000 Romanians making minimum wage will get a RON30 raise, once the government decision regulation the increase of the minimum gross wage from RON670 to RON700 comes into force.
Jobless rate will go up slightly in the first part of the year because winter makes many employers, especially builders, let some of their employees go. Yet the unemployment rate, at the least the one registered with employment agencies will remain relatively constant at 5% to 6%.
The number of employees will continue to go up, after over 100,000 new employees were hired in the first ten months of 2011, so that the total number reached 4.2 million. The increase will not occur as a result of the massive hiring plans announced by companies but rather as a result of a harsher fines enforced by the Labor Inspection Department.
After the new Labor Code came into force in May, informal employment is severely punished and may culminate in prison sentences in some cases for employers. Those people who speak foreign languages or have certified IT skills stand changes of getting a high-paying job (EUR600-EUR700 for entry-level positions), as they are the ideal candidates for companies like Competence Call Center, HP, Microsoft and IBM, which will hire this year, as well. Significant development of outsourcing is expected, which already employs over 15,000 people.
Information about the Romanians who left to work abroad will be published for the first time in March and will be possible compare with the immigration statistics of the statistics institutes of each country. This is one of the most important preliminary results of the census conducted in October. No institution currently has any clear record of how many Romanians are actually working abroad, even though some organizations did try to monitor work force migration to the West. Estimates point to three million Romanians working abroad.
The number of Romanians to receive training from specialized training companies will increase. Almost 160,000 people participated in training or career guidance programs paid for with EU funds. In 2011 such funds were used to finance more professional training courses to boost chances of unemployed people of finding a job or help employees develop.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)