Working as wishful thinking: almost 300,000 unemployed Romanians wanted a job but didn’t look for one

A total of 281,000 unemployed people wanted to work in 2017, but either they were not looking for work or were not available to start work, according to data released on Monday by the National Institute of Statistics (INS).

“Out of individuals aged 15-74 (5.907 million people), 281,000 people were part of the potential additional workforce, down 68,000 from the previous year. Of these, 277,000 were available to start work, but were not looking for a job. In 2017, the percentage ratio between this category of people and the working population was 3 percent. On the other hand, only an insignificant number of people who were part of the potential additional workforce although they were looking for a job were not available to start work,” the INS said in a statement.

Last year, the potential additional workforce (281,000 people) was down 19.5 percent from the previous year.

Also, the share of underemployed persons in the total active population was 2.3 percent in 2017, 0.1 percentage point lower than in the previous year.

Thus, in 2017, 207,000 part-time employees wanted and were available to work more hours than they currently are, being considered under-employed. “This category of persons accounted for 2.3 percent of the active population, 2.4 percent of the employed population and 30.3 percent of the total number of persons working part-time. Compared to the previous year, the number of under-employed persons decreased by 5,000,” the INS said.

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