Commissioner Ylva Johannsson: "The EU faces an annual decline of 1 million people in terms of the workforce"

In order to combat the current decline in the labor force, the European Union should annually receive one million workers from other countries of the world, Ylva Johansson, the European Commissioner for Internal Affairs, said recently in Athens.

According to the Greek media, quoted by the Associated Press, Ylva Johansson said: "For demographic reasons, the working-age population in the EU will decrease by 1 million per year. It is declining by 1 million people a year. This means that legal migration should increase by more or at least 1 million people per year, which is a challenge for the European Union".

The cited source also claims that data from a recent forecast published by Eurostat shows that the share of the population aged 65 or over will increase from 21.1% in 2022 to 31.3% by the end of the century.

The lack of labor force is a problem that the entrepreneurs in our country also feel acutely. That is why, at their request, at the end of last year, the Government approved, for the year 2024, a quota of 100,000 new foreign workers - admitted to the labor market in Romania. The Ministry of Labor argued this decision by the fact that, from the data recorded by the National Employment Agency, it appears that, in the first eight months of 2023, 304,371 jobs were repeatedly declared by employers because they did not - they could occupy.

However, the Labor Importers' Trust announced yesterday that the said quota of 100,000 workers from outside the European space is insufficient and mentioned that the Government would initially have wanted to approve a quota of 140,000 people.

According to Economedia.ro, Oana Călin, a member of the Labor Importers' Trust, said: "There is an unprecedented record of the number of Romanians who decided to leave the country in the last year, which generated a massive lack of labor work for the Romanian economy. Theoretically, the quota approved for 2024 seems sufficient, but in practice it is not. In 2023 alone, 50,000 Romanians left the country, the largest number in the last 30 years, the National Institute of Statistics tells us. Moreover, on August 5, 2023, 64,000 jobs were available on the ANOFM website. With a simple calculation, we are already talking about a total deficit of 114,000 jobs".

She stated that for employers, the process of importing labor, mainly from Asian countries, experienced multiple obstacles last year, some of which, however, were solved in an efficient manner by the authorities. Conversely, the massive rejection rate (3:1) of work visa applications for foreign workers still remains unresolved, as does the lack of a sufficient number of employees to ensure the efficiency of consular services.