December 11 (SeeNews) - Some 70% of employers in Romania anticipate no changes in the size of their payrolls, the largest percentage in over two years, which suggests the labour market is more prudent than it has been in recent quarters, recruitment company ManpowerGroup said on Tuesday.
Approximately 19% of Romanian employers expect to increase their payrolls in the first quarter of 2019, while 9% anticipate decreases in the size of their workforce, ManpowerGroup said in its 2019 first-quarter Employment Outlook Survey.
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The Net Employment Outlook (NEO) stands at a positive 15% which, although trending slightly softer than in both first and last quarter of 2018, indicates job seekers may benefit from a steady hiring pace at the beginning of the year.
The NEO is derived by taking the percentage of employers anticipating an increase in hiring activity and subtracting from it the percentage of employers expecting to see a decrease.
Hiring intentions are also positive by varying degrees across all eight regions and ten industry sectors analyzed, the data showed.
Employers in the South and Bucharest and Ilfov regions are the most optimistic, each reporting a NEO of +20%. In Bucharest and Ilfov the outlook improved by 3 percentage points over the year, while in the South region perspectives improved by 8 percentage points year-over-year.
Employers in the South-East region report the least optimistic regional NEO of +9%, remaining relatively stable in comparison with the first quarter of 2018.
Workforce gains are forecast in all of the 10 industry sectors analyzed, most notably in the manufacturing sector, where the +26% NEO is weaker by 9 percentage points year-on-year. The weakest employment perspectives are reported in the electricity, gas and water supply sector, with a -11% NEO, weaker by 22 percentage points year-on-year.
Hiring perspectives are positive across all sizes of organization. The strongest labor market is expected by employers in the large category, who report an NEO of +24%, while the most cautious hiring plans are reflected in the outlook of +4% reported by employers in micro-organizations.
The ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey was first made in 1962 and is now polling over 60,000 employers in 44 countries and territories to measure their intentions to increase or decrease the number of employees in their workforce during the next quarter.
In Romania, the present survey was conducted by InfoCorp Ltd. between October 17-30 on a representative sample of 625 employers. The margin of error for all national, regional and global data is not greater than +/- 3.9%.