The labor market in Romania will need one million new employees by 2021 to support the economic growth, according to the Coalition for Romania’s Development (CDR).

CDR presented on Tuesday, October 23, the Workforce Barometer made by PwC Romania.

The report shows that Romania is among the EU countries with the largest shares of active people that are not on the labor market, with over 34%. Only Italy and Croatia have higher shares of active population outside the labor market.

Besides retirees and students, there are over one million working age Romanians who are not officially involved in any kind of economic activities while the official number of unemployed people is about 400,000 people, the study shows. Between 600,000 and 1.2 million people could be activated to join the labor market, through measures to increase the occupancy rate, the study estimates.

The study also shows that there are big discrepancies between Romania’s counties in terms of workforce. There are several counties that prosper economically but don’t have any available labor force and counties with a large number of people who don’t officially work.

The study concludes that the labor market problems can only be solved by implementing sustainable reforms in education, health and infrastructure. In education, the priority is to correlate the university and dual school educational programs with the current needs of the labor market. Another approach is to come up with strategies to reduce gaps between regions and between counties in the same region.

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editor@romania-insider.com

(photo source: Adobe Stock)