Labour Market: Wage Growth Tricks vs. Demographic Reflections and Realities
Automatically translated summary. The full text is available in Romanian.
An Independent Think Tank “Expert-Grup” article examines the labour market in the Republic of Moldova through two key indicators, wages and employment. It looks at how demographic pressures, emigration and uneven wage growth shape a market marked by a paradoxical coexistence of low employment and low unemployment.
The labour market is constantly evolving, yet it remains shaped by economic crises and demographic challenges, including mass emigration and an ageing population and workforce. The employment rate is just over 40%, against about 76% on average in the EU, while unemployment stands at around 4%. This produces a paradox of surplus and shortage, and a precarious balance marked by skilled labour shortages, mismatches between supply and demand, and ageing.
Recent wage increases in the public and private sectors partly offset these imbalances. Pressure for higher pay also exists in other emerging economies, including the Balkans and Romania. In Moldova, a dual structure pushes wages up: high value-added sectors such as IT, transport and finance can afford higher pay, whereas many domestic firms have low productivity and are hit hardest by rising wages.
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