The government approved a quota of 100,000 foreign workers to meet the needs of the labor market in 2024, government spokesman Mihai Constantin announced on Friday.
„The decision was taken as a result of the large number of applications for issuing employment permits since the beginning of the year, until now, as well as the number of vacancies declared by employers,” the Labor Ministry said late Friday, according to News.ro.
Millions of Romanians have emigrated abroad for better paid work leaving a deficit in the labor market and employers scrambling to find candidates to fill jobs. There is an increasing demand for non-EU workers, particularly in the hospitality and construction sectors.
The General Inspectorate for Immigration (IGI) said more than 80,000 employment/secondment permits were issued this year up until the end of October and almost 10,000 applications were pending for the current year.
In comparison, about 109,000 employment/secondment notices were issued in 2022 and 50,000 the year before.
Some 82,000 active full-time individual employment contracts were registered by Romanian employers for employees who aren’t European Union nationals. The National Employment Agency said that in the first eight months of this year, 304,371 jobs were repeatedly advertised by employers because they could not fill them.
Number of foreign workers in Romania has doubled in past three years
