Employment in Romania: evidence from a panel data analysis

The labour market in Romania is facing some imbalances arising from the negative demographic trends, legislative instability, poor correlation between the educational programs with the labour market, low labour productivity. The European Union labour market strategy aims at achieving 75% employment rate by 2020, for Romania the objective being 70% (Europe 2020). Although Romania has enjoyed robust economic growth for the most part of the 2000s, the labour market was experiencing large and increasing shortages of labour and skills, which coexisted with low participation rates, as well as excess supply of labour in declining sectors (mainly agriculture). The negative growth rate of the Romanian population, which has started in the early 1990s has already reduced the population. On top of this, there is the migration of the work force - most of the migrants are still included in the labour market statistics, as inactive, but are absent from the Romania’s labour market and might be partly responsible for the slow progress of employment rate in Romania. In this context, we aim to examine the employment rate in Romania, considering a panel data analysis over the period 1996-2009. The explanatory variables are the net migration rate, the mortality and birth rates, the unemployment rate, the real earnings, the secondary and tertiary education graduates.