Romania recorded the third lowest employment rate in the EU in 2023, after Italy and Greece, according to Eurostat data published on Thursday. The data shows that only 69% of Romanians aged between 20 and 64 work, which means that almost a third of Romanians do not work.
We remind you that in Romania there is the category of special pensions applied to a wide range of employees, including magistrates, soldiers, policemen, which allow them to retire at a young age. Also, Romania grants multiple social aids, and employers constantly complain about the difficulty of finding employees.
Expenditures from the state budget on special pensions and social assistance have grown continuously in the last decade, in parallel with the increase in the budget deficit. To cover this shortfall, the PSD-PNL government has increased taxes and duties on capital, and the PSD has announced that it wants to introduce progressive taxation of wage income and further increase taxation on capital.
In parallel, Romania increases year by year the contingent of foreign citizens admitted to the labor market.
Across the EU, the employment rate of citizens set a new record, with employees aged 20 to 64 exceeding 75% (195.3 million), according to Eurostat data. The EU employment rate in 2023 is the highest since records began in 2009 and marks three consecutive years of growth, after employment fell to 72% in 2020 due to the pandemic.
Among the EU countries with the highest employment rates are the Netherlands (84%), Sweden (83%) and Estonia (82%), while the lowest rates were recorded in Italy (66%), Greece ( 67%) and Romania (69%).
In 2023, the percentage of people employed in the EU with high qualifications (overqualified) was 22%, with 21% for men and 23% for women. It is noted that “highly qualified” employees are defined as people with higher education who are employed in professions that do not require such a high level of education, according to Kathimerini.
The highest percentages of overqualifications in the EU were recorded in Spain (36%), Greece (31%) and Cyprus (30%), while the lowest percentages were recorded in Luxembourg (5%), Denmark and Czech Republic (13%).
In 18 of the 27 EU countries, women had higher overqualification rates than men, with the biggest differences being in Malta and Slovakia (both +8 percentage points) and Italy (+7 percentage points). However, in nine EU countries men had higher overqualification rates, with the largest differences in Lithuania (+5 percentage points), Latvia (+4 percentage points) and Bulgaria (+3 percentage points).
