June 13 (SeeNews) - About 28% of Romanian employers anticipate an increase in staff numbers in the third quarter of the year, recruitment company ManpowerGroup Romania said on Tuesday.
With only 7% of employers foreseeing a decrease in staffing levels and 64% anticipating no change, Romania's seasonally adjusted net employment outlook (NEO) stands at +14%.
The outlook weakened slightly by 2 percentage points on the quarter, but is relatively stable on the year, ManpowerGroup said in its third-quarter Employment Outlook Survey.
"As Romanian employers once again anticipate steady job gains in the July-September interval, the time is ripe for companies to rethink their people practices and become builders of talent, because finding it on the market is less and less an option,” Manpower Romania country manager, Igor Hahn, said.
The positive employment perspectives are however trending softer in the third quarter compared to the previous one in seven out of 10 industry sectors and six out of eight regions, the company added. Outlooks also weaken year-over-year in six sectors and four regions.
The steepest quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year decline is reported in the center region, where the +10% NEO is 19 percentage points weaker than in the previous quarter and 15 percentage points weaker on the year.
The most optimistic regional outlooks, of +20%, are reported in the Bucharest & Ilfov, northwest and south regions, while the weakest regional labour market is forecast in the southeast region, with a NEO of +4%.
Job opportunities are likely to be the brightest in the manufacturing sector, where the NEO for July-September stands at +27%, the weakest in the past six quarters. On the year, it declined by 8 percentage points, while on the quarter, is fell by 3 percentage points.
A healthy hiring climate is also forecast in the wholesale and retail sectors, with a NEO of +24%, up 2 percentage points over the year, but down 5 percentage points over the last quarter.
Electricity, gas and water supply sector employers report the weakest sector outlook of 0%. Hiring prospects in these sectors decline by 10 percentage points when compared with the previous quarter, but improve by 3 percentage points when compared with the third quarter of 2016. The hiring perspectives in the sector have only been positive once in more than 5 years, Manpower noted.
Employers in three of the four categories of organization size are optimistic, with large organizations forecasting a NEO of +25%. However, employers in micro organizations are cautious, reporting a flat NEO of 0%.
The net employment outlook is derived by taking the percentage of employers anticipating an increase in hiring activity and subtracting from it the percentage of employers expecting to see a decrease, Manpower noted.
In Romania, the present survey was conducted by InfoCorp Ltd. between April 19 and May 2 on a representative sample of 625 employers. The margin of error for all national, regional and global data is not greater than +/- 3.9%.