Romania had at the end of last year 80 employees hired in the public sector per 1,000 inhabitants, 19 more than Italy, 15 more than Spain and 11 more than Germany, a recent A.T Kearny survey found.
1.72 million persons worked in the state sectors at the end of 2008, 10.4% fewer than 2005.
Norway and Russia have the highest public workforce, with 182 and 153 respectively.
“Romania has more people working for the state per 1,000 inhabitants than countries such as Italy and Spain mainly because it still has many inefficient state owned companies in transport, utilities or manufacturing. But if we look at these countries, we see that they have more employees per 1,000 inhabitants than Romania in Public Administration, Defense and Compulsory Social Security”, said Michael Weiss, Vice President of A.T. Kearney.
The highest number in public sector workers is in Public Administration and Defense, Compulsory Social Security – 22.1 per 1,000 inhabitants, Education – 17.3 and Health and Social Work – 14.6. On the other hand, the lowest number of public sector workers is in financial intermediation – 0.89.
By contrast, Spain has 21.56 employees in Public Administration and Defense, Compulsory Social Security.
“In the Romanian public sector not the number of employees is the problem, but the overall quality and the output. A pure headcount reduction will not lead towards a self healing mechanism in the organization; it will not change the system because the headcount is not the key problem”, said Michael Weiss, Vice President of A.T. Kearney.
Gheorghe Pogea, minister of Finance said recently the public workforce would be cut from 1.4 million persons to 1.06 million until 2015.
The survey notes that a bigger problem than the number of public sector workers is the active population in the local public labor market.
“Even though in
