Hiring perspectives for the second quarter of this year are mostly positive in Romania, but the trend is moderately weaker both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year, according to the ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey.

Almost 1 in 4 Romanian employers intend to increase the size of their workforce in the April-June 2018 interval, and 7% expect to decrease their payrolls in the same interval, the survey shows. However, the seasonally adjusted Net Employment Outlook for the second quarter stands at +10%, the weakest in over two years. Perspectives weaken both over the previous quarter, by 5 percentage points, and over the same period in 2017, by 8 percentage points.

Based on regions, the strongest hiring perspectives are reported in the Center region, where the Outlook stands at +17%, weakening however both over the first three months of 2018, and over Q2/2017 by 2, and 7 percentage points, respectively. Hiring intentions weaken in seven of eight regions over the January-March 2018 interval, most notably in the North-West region, where perspectives are 25 percentage points weaker than in the first quarter of 2018, and the Net Employment Outlook stands at a modest +8%.

When compared to the second quarter of 2017, the sharpest drop in confidence is reported by employers in the South-East region, where the Outlook stands at -1%, down by 21 percentage points. Employers in the South-East region are in fact the country’s least optimistic, reporting the only negative regional Outlook for the second quarter of 2018, according to ManpowerGroup.

Staffing levels are expected to grow in eight of the ten industry sectors analyzed, but perspectives trend weaker than in Q1/2018 in all sectors. The most significant quarter-on-quarter drop is reported in the Transport, Storage and Communications sector, where hiring intentions have weakened by 14 percentage points over the January-March 2018 interval, and the Outlook has slipped into negative territory, at -5%. Also negative are perspectives in the Mining and Quarrying sector, the -6% Outlook reported by employers being the least optimistic nationwide. Meanwhile, the employers in the Manufacturing sector are once again the most optimistic, posting a +25% Net Employment Outlook.

In Romania, the ManpowerGroup Employment Outlook Survey for the second quarter of 2018 was conducted by InfoCorp Ltd. between January 8 and January 18, 2018, on a representative sample of 625 employers. The margin of error for all national, regional and global data is around +/- 3.9%.

Survey: Romanian businesses foresee hiring slowdown

Irina Marica, irina.marica@romania-insider.com