After a decade-long month-on-month increase in the number of employees in Bucharest, peaking just short of a million in September 2008, the indicator began to register a steep downward trend, and fell to 921,062 employees at the end of May 2009, according to the latest data published by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
“There are many situations of employees with temporary contracts which have not been extended recently. Young people from outside Bucharest probably preferred to go back home. On the other hand, it is out of the question that there was a job flow outside the capital and that individuals left Bucharest to get these jobs. Moreover, it is good to know that many Romanians returned to the country in the first half of this year because they lost their jobs abroad,” the Sales Manager of the Lugera&Makler recruitment company, Iuliana Badea, told MONEY.ro.
Bucharest lost over 6,100 employees in May alone. This figure surpasses the collective layoffs operated in 2009 by the two largest companies in Romania (Petrom and Mittal Galati laid off a total of 6,000 people this year).
There is no doubt that Bucharest’s main attraction, besides the higher number of job offers, was the average salary income, far above the level registered in the rest of the country. Lately however, Bucharest salaries registered a sharper downward trend than those at the national level. The gross average salary income in Bucharest fell 7.64 percent between April and May, to RON 2,518 (some €598).
