The labour market down over 1,100 jobs a day in 2009

The largest number of laid off employees are from the private sector, with most in industry, construction, and trade. These sectors laid off a total of over 250,000 employees, while the public sector recruited staff in spite of the difficult economic context. Thus, in the health care sector 9,000 employees were recruited, while a further 6,000 found jobs in public administration.

“The only situations in which recruitment was possible in public administration were on single jobs, where there was only one person to do a certain activity and, automatically, if the job remained vacant, another person or a temporary employee was needed, in case of people who were suspended or on maternity leave,” the President of the National Federation of Trade Unions in Local Public Administration, Romel Neagu, told Business Standard.

The only field in the public sector with massive layoffs was education, where more than 6,000 teachers were let go. Most of the local market unemployed are aged 30-49. Some three quarters of the unemployed have primary or secondary schooling, or professional studies listed under education on their resumes, while 22 percent are high school graduates, who continued to study later. Seven percent of the Romanian unemployed are university graduates.

One in four employers on the Romanian market is forecasting a decline in recruitment in the first quarter of 2010, twice as many employers as in the corresponding period this year, according to a Manpower study on Employment Outlook. Meanwhile, the number of companies estimating an increase in recruitment halved. However, more than half of employers said they expect no significant change on the labour market in the first part of 2010. Eight in ten activity sectors expect a decline in recruitment, and the fewest employment opportunities will be in the construction, hotel, restaurant, and catering sectors.

The jobless rate amounted to 7.5 percent at the end of November, up 0.4 percentage points month-on-month, according to data provided by the National Employment Agency (ANOFM). The number of unemployed rose by some 30,000 people in the past month, to 683,123, close to the 685,000 people estimated for year-end. The highest unemployment rate was registered in the Mehedinţi (13.7 percent), Vaslui (13.3 percent), and Alba (12 percent) counties, while the lowest values were reported in Bucharest (2.2 percent), Ilfov (2.3 percent), and Timiş (4.4 percent) counties.