Romania, at the extremes: while employers and even the government are struggling not to increase the minimum wage in the economy because SMEs would not have the financial resources for this, at the opposite pole an employer has been looking for a year and a half for an operational director with 4,000 euros net/month and cannot find him

At this moment, the employers' organizations – IMM Romania – and even the government, minus the PSD ministers, do not support the increase in the minimum wage for the economy from January 1, reasoning that small and medium-sized Romanian companies no longer have the financial capacity to pay the new wage increases in conditions where the economy is not doing well and other costs are increasing – the costs of raw materials, interest, the costs of taxes and the government increased them and will continue to increase them. Now, the minimum salary in the economy is 4,050 lei gross (796 euros), which means a minimum net salary of 2,574 lei (506 euros). In order to pay the minimum wage in the economy, a company has a total cost of 4,134 lei. At the opposite pole, there are companies that cannot find enough labor. Gheorghe Silaghi, the owner of the Rozoti transport company from Oradea, with a business of 40 million euros, says that the main problem he faces is not related to bank financing, the market, orders, but human resources. «We fight with people, we try to find people who want to work, and the salaries we offer are not low at all. For example, a dispatcher can reach 2,800 euros net per month, a driver can have a monthly average, when he has trips, of 5,900 euros net. I've been looking for an operational director for a year and a half and I can't find him, given that the salary offered is 4,000 euros net per month», mentioned Gheorghe Silaghi two weeks ago at an economic conference organized at the Romanian Embassy in Budapest by Banca Transilvania, which brought over 20 Romanian companies to the event to discuss the presence on the Hungarian market. That's the biggest problem we face – finding people, he says. And because people are very hard to find, we don't want to grow any more, we want to stabilize our business at the current level, he mentioned. Of course, offers of 2,500 euros per month in Romania, 4,000 euros per month or even more are not found on all roads. For some companies, it is much more difficult to find middle and top management than other categories of personnel, even if the salary difference is large. The average salary in the economy reached 9,002 gross lei (1,772 euros), i.e. 5,387 net lei (1,060 euros). The higher the salary offered, the higher the employers' demands, which makes covering such a position quite difficult, despite the salary package offered. Even if Romania's economy has noticeably decreased in the last year, even if there are many question marks for next year, companies have not yet started to make important restructurings, which means that unemployment remains extremely low. There are areas in the country where, despite the economic adversity, the lack of personnel is quite present. In an attempt to solve the problem of the labor force, IMM Romania, which represents small and medium-sized Romanian companies, supports the increase of the contingent of foreign workers for 2026, to 150,000 work permits. The companies claim that the number of work permits/the quota set at 100,000 foreign workers for this year was not enough for the need for labor in construction, HoReCa, transport, agriculture and services. Foreign workers are not even paid the minimum wage in the economy, and Romanian companies often even offer them accommodation to convince them to work. The owners of Romanian companies say that they offer a higher salary package to foreign workers because they are more stable than Romanian employees, more serious, plus they work on Saturdays and Sundays when needed. Plus there are jobs that Romanians no longer want to do and that's why foreign, Asian workers are needed. Next year is complicated on the labor market, with lower salary increases if not at all until the economy starts to grow again and the companies resume their investments. And, if anyone wants to apply for the job of operational director at the company in Oradea, they are welcome.
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