OECD reviews of labour market : Boosting the skills of Romania’s workforce

In the context of a rapidly shrinking working-age population and low employment rates, particularly among young people and low-educated workers, policies to promote workforce training, upskilling and reskilling must be a policy priority for Romania. This includes ensuring that all young people – including those in rural areas, from low-income communities and from ethnic minorities – leave the education system with the basic skills and vocational skills they need to gain a foothold in the labour market. It also means providing adult workers – both employed and unemployed – with relevant and attractive training options that raise their productivity and wages and help them adapt to a changing labour market.

Too many young people fail to acquire the basic and vocational skills they need to gain a foothold in the labour market

Poor educational outcomes of young people are a major concern in Romania and one main driver of the high share of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET, see Figure 2.5). Romania has not yet achieved universal participation in primary education, and enrolment in lower‑secondary education is low: net enrolment rates at both education levels equalled around 84% in 2022 according to national estimates. In the 2022 PISA survey , 15‑year‑olds in Romania performed substantially below the OECD average in mathematics, reading and science. Approximately 49% of Romanian pupils do not achieve baseline levels of proficiency in mathematics (i.e. score below Level 2), 42% in reading, and 44% in science, far more than in the OECD on average. The World Bank estimates that, pre‑pandemic, 41% of school leavers in Romania were functionally illiterate, and that this share may have increased by up to 10 percentage points as a result of the COVID‑19 pandemic. Inequalities in learning outcomes are also large: the share of pupils’ mathematics performance that can be explained by their socio‑economic status is greater in Romania than in any other country included in the PISA study , and urban-rural disparities in participation and learning outcomes are larger than in any other Central and Eastern European country

Educational attainment is also low. Romania has the highest rate of early school leaving in the European Union: 16.6% of 18‑24 year‑olds had not completed upper-secondary education and were not involved in any education or training in 2023 (EU average of 9.5%; Eurostat . Furthermore, the early school leaving rate in Romania has shown no improvement over the last years (see also the discussion in the Economic Survey 2022 . Early school leaving is particularly widespread in rural areas, at a rate of 27.5% . Among young Roma between the ages of 20‑24, only about one in five (22%) reported having completed upper-secondary education in 2021 . Completion rates in tertiary education are only little more than half as high as the OECD average (25% of 25‑34 year‑olds had a tertiary-level qualification in 2022, compared to 47% in the OECD on average) and have been stagnating over the last decade.

Modernising the vocational education and training (VET) system is an important lever for Romania to improve educational outcomes and smooth the school-to-work transition, particularly for less academically minded students and those from disadvantaged backgrounds (see also OECD). More than half (57%) of upper‑secondary students in Romania were enrolled in vocational programmes in 2022 – a figure above the EU‑27 average (49%), though well below the rates of up to 70% seen in Austria, Czechia, the Netherlands and Slovenia. Most of VET programmes in Romania include a substantial work-based component: in three‑year professional VET programmes (EQF Level 3), for example, work‑based learning should account for around half of programme contents and is provided by professional schools in collaboration with employers.2 However, in many cases, practical training mainly takes place in workshops and laboratories simulating a workplace environment rather than with employers . A dual-VET pathway was made available in 2017/18 and accounted for around 16% of all students enrolled in professional VET programmes in 2022/23, up from 5% in 2017/18, with training primarily offered by larger employers. However, VET in Romania suffers from insufficient financial resources, access to education and training is unequal, and rates of early leaving are high, particularly among students from rural and poor communities. Socio‑economically disadvantaged students, who are less likely to do well in the academic examination for admission to upper-secondary education, tend to be directed to vocational programmes regardless of their preferences and career goals. And many VET graduates struggle with the transition to work: within the first three years of graduation, less than two in three (61%) young people with a vocational degree who are not in education or training were in employment in 2023, though the employment rate of graduates with a general degree is slightly lower still (60%). Both rates are among the lowest across EU countries (EU averages of 79% and 65%; Eurostat

Romania has launched policy initiatives in various areas in recent years to improve young people’s educational outcomes and skills, better support them with the school-to-work transition, and reconnect young people who are out of education and work.

Boosting adult learning will be necessary to address Romania’s large skill shortages and mismatches

Romania’s labour market is characterised by persistent skills shortages and mismatches, which are likely to increase further with the digital and green transitions. Horizontal (i.e. field‑of‑study) mismatch is large in Romania, with close to 40% of workers employed in a field different from the one they are specialised in . Vertical mismatch is also widespread: in high-skill, blue‑collar occupations, the share of undereducated workers is greater than it is in peer countries, while many workers in low-skill, blue‑collar occupations are overeducated. Reasons for this widespread mismatch include the insufficient alignment of Romania’s upper‑secondary education system with labour market needs, and very low, though slowly rising, rates of tertiary education. In the 2019 World Bank Enterprise Surveys, companies in Romania named the lack of adequate workforce skills as their most important constraint for doing business. Less than one‑in-three working-age adults in Romania have basic digital skills, the lowest share across all EU countries 

In this context, adult learning has an important role to play in promoting workers’ employability, boosting their productivity and earnings potential, and ensuring that employers’ skill needs are met. However, despite recent increases, participation rates in adult learning remain very low in Romania. In 2023, only 6.7% of 25‑64 year‑olds reported having participated in formal or non-formal education and training over the last four weeks. This is little more than half the EU average (12.7%) and lower than in any EU-OECD country, except for Greece The participation rate for low-educated adults is lower still, at 1.4% (EU average of 5.2%), a particular concern given that about one‑in-five adults in Romania have not gone beyond lower‑secondary education

Read the report here: OECD Reviews of Labour Market and Social Policies: Romania 2025: Lifting Romania’s workforce potential | OECD

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