EJobs Romania saw employers post a record 420,000 new jobs on its site in 2022, the highest total in the last 20 years.
With around 10,000 vacancies posted on EJobs.ro in the first week of 2023, the figure is in line with the same period of last year, indicative of the strength of the country’s employment market.
“The beginning of the month confirms signals we had at the end of last year, namely that 2023 will start strong and continue recruitment and team expansion policies,” said Bogdan Badea, CEO of EJobs Romania, quoted by the news site Romania-Insider.com.
“Furthermore, candidates have also immediately become active after the holidays, so we see a number of over 225,000 applications, a slight increase over the same period last year.”
Reflecting the impact of the pandemic, remote work continues to be popular with Romanian job seekers, with some 14% of the total number of applications on the vertical being for home-based roles.
The pandemic also gave rise to a trend of greater uptake of second jobs. “Remote working gave many employees the flexibility to begin more side projects in the last few years, and 70% of respondents in a recent survey conducted by EJobs stated that they need to supplement their long-term revenues. This will likely lead them to second jobs or temporary side projects,” reported Romania-Insider.
Romania has long grappled with a shortage of workforce, as the country’s European Union accession in 2007 and subsequent loosening of restrictions on foreign labor saw Romanian workers leave in droves for higher pay in Western European countries.
To compensate, local employers have resorted to importing workers. According to government figures, 100,000 foreign workers have been admitted to the country for 2023, the same figure as in 2022 and double the number in 2021. Such workers find jobs primarily in construction, HoReCa, and transportation, and come from such countries as Vietnam, Sri Lanka, Nepal, Bangladesh, and India.
Despite wider fears of recession, Romania’s labor market is supported by an economy that has held up better than some regional rivals, boosted by “European Union funding, currency stability and foreign investment driven in part by reshoring from Russia and Ukraine,” according to a report in Reuters.
The IMF forecasts it to expand by 3.1% this year.
Ringier-owned EJobs is the No. 1 recruitment marketplace in Romania by traffic (1.5 million total monthly visits in December, according to SimilarWeb) and by annual revenue, which amounted to $13.2 million U.S. in 2021 — around 90% of this total coming from job listings.
Its primary competitors include BestJobs.eu, owned by Romania-based Neogen Capital, and RomJob.ro, owned by Austria-based media company Russmedia.