PM Orban: Number of citizens with employment agreements down by 14,000 in May against same month of 2019

Prime Minister Ludovic Orban on Tuesday stated that the number of persons with employment agreements dropped by 14,000 in May 2020 compared with the same period last year. "Very many analysts, political leaders from the Opposition predicted the apocalypse in the employment field: a scary unemployment. We have even been accused of not taking measures for it. But I will just give you a few data in exchange. In May, the number of citizens with employment agreements - and not the number of employment agreements - was by only 14,000 smaller in May 2020 than the number of Romanians who had employment agreements in May 2019, in the context in which the strongest impact of the economic crisis is supposed to be the highest in April, May and June this year. However, the measures that we adopted protected the Romanians' jobs and this is proved by the data, by the figures," said the Prime Minister, at the beginning of the Government meeting. He also mentioned that more than one million Romanians benefited from the furlough measure and approximately 70,000 individuals from different forms of allowances. "According to the data we hold - obviously, not the final data yet - up to 750,000 Romanians benefit from the active measure that ensure 41.5 per cent of their gross salary to those employees who resume activity at the same companies they worked for before the crisis and who were furloughed, which basically shows that there weren't so many jobs lost in very many fields facing restrictions, due to the fact that, besides the almost 750,000 Romanians benefiting from this active measure, we also kept the furlough measure for the employees in fields still under restrictions. And once with the new relaxation measures, which will come with the resumption of activity in several fields, the number of employees working with the impacted companies will drop and, of course, very many of them who are still furloughed, once with the resumption of activity they will be able to start working again and benefit from the measure that we decided," said Orban. The head of Executive said that although "there is a demand on the labour market," "not always the available workforce corresponds" to the demand. "A continuous training process is always needed, people learning new skills, new professions and here we will have to earmark significant resources, but with changed mechanisms, because we don't need to just throw away the money on all types of programmes - such as POSDRU or other programmes - but to direct them effectively to the beneficiaries, to the persons to be then hired and the companies which will hire them," he explained. AGERPRES (RO - author: Irinela Visan, editor: Claudia Stanescu; EN - author: Cristina Zaharia, editor: Adina Panaitescu)

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