Romania’s hot economy is attracting foreign workers
livemint.comeconomy has been growing steadily for a decade, last year by 4.7%. In 2010 GDP per person, adjusted for prices, was 53% of the EU average; by 2021 it was 74%. Meanwhile the population shrank from 23.2m in 1990 to 19m today.
Birth rates collapsed after the revolution of 1989, and millions have emigrated. The country now faces severe labour shortages. The afternoon queue outside Bucharest’s immigration office is long.
Nikky, a Nigerian nanny, says she would ideally like to work in Britain, but would rather live legally here than illegally there. Atharv, a software engineer from India, and Nico, a barman from Sri Lanka, speak no Romanian, but this has proved no obstacle for them so far. So hard is it to get into the office that Nico slept on the pavement overnight; the other two arrived at dawn.
Suddenly there is an uproar: someone they have not seen before is attempting to queue-jump past them. Hotels, bars and restaurants are desperate for workers, but the biggest gap is in construction. Alexandru Baiculescu, deputy general manager of Hidro Salt, a construction firm, has 350 employees.
Of these 200 are foreigners, mostly Sri Lankans and Vietnamese. They are recruited via agencies, but Romania’s bureaucracy is so overwhelmed by the exploding demand that many of those invited never arrive: they are filched by other countries, such as the United Arab Emirates, in the months before their Romanian visas come through. Mr Baiculescu pays $1,000 a month plus accommodation and food, but up to 40% of his new recruits leave within months to try their luck illegally in better-paid countries.
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