September 12 (SeeNews) - About 20% of Romanian employers intend to increase staff numbers in the fourth quarter of the year, recruitment company ManpowerGroup Romania said on Tuesday.
With only 12% of employers foreseeing a decrease in staffing levels and 66% anticipating no change, Romania's seasonally adjusted net employment outlook (NEO) stands at +15%.
The outlook weakened slightly by 1 percentage points on the quarter, and by 3 percentage points on the year, ManpowerGroup said in its fourth-quarter Employment Outlook Survey.
"Forecasts are positive for yet another quarter, the 9th consecutive interval of double-digit Outlooks, but the growth we’re anticipating in Q4 across regions and industry sectors is no longer so uniform,” Manpower Romania country manager, Igor Hahn, said.
Unlike the second and the third quarter of 2017, when employers were reporting hiring intentions regardless of their sector of activity, negative outlooks are now reported for electricity, gas and water supply as well as transport, storage and communications, Hahn added. Also, in five of eight regions and five of 10 sectors employers have tempered their hiring plans compared to the third quarter.
"Such signs of increased caution are often associated with a changing regulatory environment, which may induce employers to adopt a wait-and-see approach as they calibrate their budgets and staff needs," the official said.
Staffing levels are expected to grow in eight of 10 industry sectors and all eight regions during the next three months. Hiring plans are trending stronger than in the same quarter of 2016 in seven out of 10 industry sectors and five out of eight regions, but weaken on the quarter in five sectors and five regions.
The steepest quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year decline is reported in the wholesale and retail trade sector, where the +2% NEO weakens on the quarter by 21 percentage points and by 23 percentage points on the year.
The most robust improvement, both quarter-on-quarter and year-on-year is reported by employers in the finance, insurance, real estate and business services sector, where the +24% NEO strengthens by 17 percentage points on the quarter and by 18 percentage points on the year.
From a regional standpoint, hiring perspectives are most favourable in the Bucharest-Ilfov and North-West regions, where employers report NEO of +17% and +15%, respectively.
Employers in three of the four categories of organization size are optimistic, with large organizations forecasting a NEO of +28%. Employers in micro organizations are reporting a negative NEO of -1%.
In Romania, the present survey was conducted by InfoCorp Ltd. between July 19 and August 1 on a representative sample of 625 employers. The margin of error for all national, regional and global data is not greater than +/- 3.9%.