The economic crisis could leave 17,000 Romanians unemployed, labor minister deems

Around 17,000 Romanians could be left without jobs due to the financial market turmoil, which would require an increase of the budget spendings for unemployment in 2009, according to the country's Labor Minister Mariana Campeanu.

However, the Romanian market has the ability to absorb the layoffs due to an accute labor shortage in some sectors of the economy.

The unemployment allowance budget for 2009 took into account a cut in the unemployment rate from 4 percent this year to 3.9 percent in the next. The social security budget for 2009 is planned to receive an 11.4 percent slice of the country's gross domestic product (GDP), or 65.7 billion lei.

But the projected budget for next year does not consider the 50 percent salary hike for state employees, which would raise the average gross salary to 2,500 lei and the average pension to 1,200 lei in 2009.

The average gross salary used for calculating the public budget and the social security budget for next year is 1,865 lei, almost 17 percent higher than the one considered for projecting the 2008 budget.

NewsIn