Romanian Govt. ready to take in 100,000 foreign workers in 2023 amid workforce shortage

Romania’s Government is ready to accept 100,000 non-EU workers into the national labor market in 2023, the same number as this year.

By mid-September 2022, the General Inspectorate for Immigration had issued 64,894 employment/posting permits. At that time, the immigration authority also had almost 8,700 employment requests still in processing.

The trend is obvious. Back in 2021, only 38,000 new employment permits were issued for non-EU workers. The number was lower in prior years, with 22,300 in 2020 and 29,800 in 2019.

In September 2022, over 78,400 active employment contracts were registered by Romanian employers for workers from outside the EU. Still, workforce shortage persists in many economic sectors in Romania.

According to data from the National Employment Agency cited by Economedia.ro, close to 190,000 jobs for which there was no available workforce were identified in Romania between January and July of this year. Most of them were in constructions, the restaurant industry, protection services, temporary staff contracting, transportation of goods, and retail.