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Romanian conundrum

From where does a developing country, with much of its infrastructure broken down, get its workforce to modernise. 

China, for example, routinely building airports, rail links and motorways, has a vast workforce of its own to call upon. Dubai, that glittering economic engine of the Gulf, imports so many workers that they make up more than 80 per cent of the population.   Romania, one of the European Union’s newest members, doesn’t quite know what to do.  Since joining the EU in 2007, more than two million people – or ten per cent of the whole population – have left for richer parts of

Europe and there are job vacancies — 500,000 in the construction industry alone.  Hear my report on the BBC’s From Our Own Correspondent.

This entry was posted on Thursday, October 30th, 2008 at 10:14 am and is filed under General Discussion. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

One Response to “Romanian conundrum”
  1. Humphrey Says:
    November 1st, 2008 at 10:51 pm

    From Lucian Sandor at Boston University of Medicine:-

    I believe that the shortage of plumbers in Romania will be solved as soon as the salaries for these jobs will reach at least 50% of their Western counterparts. I never heard of a shortage of bankers in Romania, since their salary/qualification ratio is much better than plumbers’. Also, the thousands of Romanian plumbers working in Spain or Italy – some of them having earned college degrees – never stopped investing in homes in Romania, a sign that they would prefer to return as soon as this will not mean their immediate starvation. Your report
    fails to mention these facts and implies that a relaxation of
    immigration rules would be a panacea, while it is obvious that it will only bring the salaries further down, chasing away both the native and, after a short disappointing stay, the immigrant plumbers. Work hands are a resource as much as any other, and when supply goes down and the demand goes up, the cost can only increase.

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