“An explanation of the significant rise in the wage bill in Romania in 2018 over 2017 is that public sector wages went up quite a lot compared with other EU countries,” said Anca Puiu, consultant with executive search and management consulting firm Korn Ferry.
“Moreover, the public sector has a lot of employees compared with the total employees in the private sector and if we look at the total number of employees in Romania compared with the population numbers, the percentage is much lower than in other countries.”
Out of the about 5 million employees in Romania, 1.2 million work in the public sector and their wages cost the country more than EUR18 billion last year (9.1% of GDP), following successive raises. These employees generated a EUR3 billion increase in the wage bill last year, ZF calculated.
The minimum wage hike, the raises in the private sector (4% to 5% on average) and the pressure on the labor market caused by the personnel shortage forced private sector employers to raise wages, which showed in the wage bill.
The EUR80 billion wage bill puts Romania on the 16th place in the EU, even though it ranks 7th by population numbers.
Romania’s wage bill as a percentage of the GDP rose to 39.8% in 2018, much lower than the EU average of 47.7%. In comparison, the wage bill of Germany, the largest in the EU, stands at EUR1,745 billion or 51.5% of the country’s GDP in 2018.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)