PwC Report: Skills shortage generates total losses of over EUR 7 bln to Romanian private businesses

Over half of the Romanian private businesses (52%) say that shortage of skilled employees causes financial losses reaching a total of EUR 7.1 billion estimated for the entire economy, reveals PwC European Private Business Survey 2019. Most of the entrepreneurs face a lack of candidates especially when they want to recruit technicians, suport staff or sales experts.

”The difficulty in finding employees with the right skills for certain occupations is holding companies back from realizing their full potential of growth and, implicitly, of the country’s economy. Entrepreneurs’ assessments indicate that their total loss due to labor shortage is 3.7% of Romania’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP). The massive migration of Romanian workers to Western European countries, the aging of the population and the inadequate educational curriculum are the main reasons that have led to the current workforce situation”, says Ionut Simion, Country Managing Partner, PwC Romania.

Over one third of the Romanian private businesses (36%) shows that the skill shortages were costing them 5% or more in the turnover, 10% indicate losses between 5-10% and 6% say it exceed 10% of turnover. However, 48% say they have no losses for this reason.

The measures companies use to attract specialists or to develop the digital skills of their employees are internal and external training, recruiting of skilled experts, but also of national graduates and upskilling the workforce by collaborating with start-ups.

“The quality of the workforce is essential to the future success of any company. So, in the context of the digital transformation of the economy, pressure will be on the employers to find people with the right skills or at least with the right potential to learn new skills, which is why more and more investment will be needed in education and training, both from companies and government”, says Ionut Simion.

Main conclusions

• 68% among the private businesses say they have difficulties in finding technical and administrative / support staff. With these percentages, Romania ranks first among the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries, with the largest deficit of specialists for these two categories of occupations.
• 50% have problems to hire sales staff, 46% – engineers, 40% – trainers and 22% – senior management. For each of these occupations, Romania ranks second in the region in terms of the lack of workforce, as perceived by entrepreneurs.
• 22% mention difficult hiring financial and accounting specialists, which places Romania on the third place in Central and Eastern Europe, and 18% the digital experts, where our country comes to the seventh place in the region.

In CEE, the total losses estimated by private business due to skills shortages are believed to reach EUR 358 billion, value bigger than the combined GDP of Croatia, Hungary and Slovakia.

PwC Central and Eastern Europe Private Business Survey 2019 was conducted in 4 regions and 53 countries in Europe, Middle East and Africa, with key decision makers from 2,993 private businesses with a turnover of at least EUR 10 million.