Productivity of Romanian employees reached 56.7% of the average in the EU countries (100%) in 2014, compared with 2004 when it stood at 34%, which means Romanian employees are 67% more productive than they were a decade ago.
Poland, whose productivity stands at 74% of the EU level saw productivity per employee rise 22% in 2004-2014, while in Czech Republic it increased by merely 5% in the past ten years to 77% of the EU level.
“Us having the highest increase in productivity among the EU countries is good news, but we still need ten, fifteen or maybe twenty years to reach the average of the other EU countries,” says Sorin Faur, HR director of audit and tax consulting firm BDO Balkans.
“The increase was very high became we started very low, we are still far behind other countries’ productivity level.”
Romania remains at the bottom of the EU ranking by labor productivity per employee, beating only Bulgaria, whose productivity stood at 43.7% of the EU average in 2014.
“Labor productivity has increased a great deal in the private sector in the last few years and I think we are getting close to EU average fast,” said Alina Radulescu, HR manager of canned foods producer Scandia Food in Sibiu.
“I believe there are at least two things that can be improved in order to boost Romanian employees’ productivity: technology use and increasing the revenue of companies, which can be generated by developing businesses domestically and abroad. Without a fast-paced GDP growth, it’s hard for productivity to increase.”
Low productivity of Romanian employees has been one of the most often used arguments by foreign investors in the talks between the government and the business sector over minimum wage raises. Whereas they said they could not ask their shareholders for higher pay budgets, because the labor productivity growth rate was not that high, the Eurostat statistics say otherwise.
(English version by Loredana Fratila-Cristescu)