Labour market may recover in March

Labour Minister Mihai Seitan yesterday said the labour market might recover in March as unemployment had stagnated over the month of February. In his view, the fact that unemployment rate remained the same as in January – 8.1 per cent – is ‘a modest, yet certain signal’.


‘I don’t believe a total of 1 M employed people will be reached, even if unemployment continues to grow’ Minister Seitan said during a workforce debating session. He added Romania might end this year with lower employment rate than the December 2009 one. Another fact brought up by the labour minister is that Romanian education has broken from reality of the labour market and the vocational re-training courses paid for with public money have produced too many confectioners and barbers. The official says that less than 10 per cent of the re-trained workforce has found jobs. Minister Seitan’s statements contradict those from President Basescu who, eight months ago, was urging education minister, then Ecaterina Andronescu, to adjust school curricula to the Romanian economy. ‘We are running short of auto mechanics and car body repair shop workers trained in school. There are no more catering high-schools to train waiters. We are all training to be philosophers who don’t usually find work easily’ Traian Basescu was saying.


Recently, the labour minister has also said public sector workers might be allowed to cash both a pension and a salary begging with January 1, 2011, the current restriction having been enforced for saving purposes and for a limited period only.


16 pc of private companies resort to technical unemployment


A PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) survey suggests in 2009 only 16 per cent of privately-owned companies resorted to technical unemployment for a period of up to three months and 8 per cent to unpaid leave, but that the situation is bound to change this year when both indicators are expected to go up in an attempt to prevent layoffs. PwC partner Ruxandra Stoian has stated at the same conference that 70.4 per cent of companies had given pay rises to their employees in 2009. In a different context, the President of the Association of Businesspersons of Romania (AOAR), Florin Pogonaru, noted that keeping the current VAT and flat rate tax was a pre-requisite for attracting foreign investment.