Labour Market and Educational Mismatches in Romania

Abstract

The objective of this paper is to study Romanian employees’ perceptions on the relationship between education system performance and labour market requirements. The research was focused on the analysis of the labour market in Romania in terms of the skills required by the current job. The questions were aimed at studying three main aspects related to the current jobs of Romanian employees: general characteristics (length of service, source of information about current job, the degree of satisfaction related to different aspects of it), mismatches between the level or type of education and job requirements (time to become effective, how they acquired knowledge and skills held, the contribution of education and training to improve performance in current job, over-qualification versus under-qualification, over-education versus under-education), situation in terms of skills held and those required by the workplace (skill obsolescence, skill shortages, skill gap). The results show that even in a crisis period when unemployment is at high values, employers have difficulties in finding appropriate qualifications for some jobs, or the right candidate for the vacancies. Even current employees lack some important abilities or skills such as: motivation, loyalty or responsibility.