The number of employees from Romania went down by 1.2 percent in the first quarter of the year, being one of the EU countries that registered decrease, together with Latvia (-1.9 percent), Croatia (-1.2 percent), Croatia (-0.6 percent) and Lithuania (-0.5 percent), while overall the number of employees increased by 0.4 percent in EU and Euro zone, compared with the previous quarter, according to the National Institute of Statistics (INS).
The highest increases were registered in Estonia (0.2 percent), Malta (1.7 percent), Sweden (1.2 percent) and Ireland (1.1 percent).
Compared with the first quarter of 2016, the number of employees went up by 1.5 percent in Euro zone and 1.4 percent in EU. In Romania, the number of employees fell by 0.4 percent compared with the same period of 2016.
Eurostat estimates that the EU states registered a record of employees number in the first quarter of the year of 234.2 million.