The global economic crisis has seriously affected the EU labour market, leaving over 23 million people – more than the total population of Romania – unemployed and with little hope of finding a new job in the coming months.
In the last year and a half alone, 4.3 million jobs have been lost – constituting 1.9% of the total workforce in the EU. For the whole recession period, 7.5 million jobs are estimated to have been lost.
Unemployment is expected to reach 10% and stay at this level until at least 2011, according to an analysis by Dr. Radu Serban, published by EurActiv Romania.
At a conference in March, Romanian politician Leonard Orban – the former European commissioner for multilingualism – stated gravely that "many of the jobs created through Lisbon [the EU's 2000-2010 plan for jobs and growth] are lost, many of them forever".
Romania way behind EU target
At the end of 2009, the employment rate in Romania stood at just 58.6% – a long way away from EU-wide target of 75% by the year 2020.
Moreover, the country's job situation has worsened since the end of the 1990s: compared to last year's 58.6%, the employment rate in 1998 was 64.2%. Over the same period, the rate across the EU-27 rose from 61.2% to 64.6%, pointed out Dr. Serban.
The Romanian employment market has lost more than two million people in the past few years, mostly young ones, who now form big communities particularly in Spain and Italy. An elite diaspora is slowly taking shape as well, especially in Brussels, where better paid jobs attracted thousands of Romanians to work for the EU institutions or the private sector.
In the spring, Romanian Labour Minister Mihai Seitan stated that in contrast with the Union's 75% employment goal, Romania is nearer to 50%. Women, young people and the over-45s are finding it particularly hard to find a job, he said.
"We have an ambitious target to reach over the next ten years," said Seitan, who underlined that solutions will have to be found, especially for those most affected by the current lack of job opportunities.
The government's employment policies will have to consider people's qualifications, he added, with many young people struggling to find work because schools do not offer labour market-oriented training.
Subsistence farming not counted
However, Cristian Ghinea, an analyst at the Romanian Centre for European Policies, points out that the country's low employment figure does not take into account Romanians working in subsistence farming – those who focus on growing enough food to feed their families.
"The employment rate does not include people working in subsistence agriculture. We have 30% of the population working in agriculture, double the proportion of the next [member state] on the list, Poland," stated Ghinea at a recent conference.
The Romanian agriculture sector is very fractured, Ghinea explains, between subsistence agriculture and large-scale farms. The problem with the latter, he believes, is that they do not have a social mobilisation effect. "They employ very few people, unlike medium-sized agriculture, for example in Poland," he said.
According to recent media reports, foreign companies are among the few in Romania that have taken people on since the onset of the crisis. Working almost exclusively for foreign clients, multinationals are now recruiting actively – with the automobile industry leading the recruitment wave.
