Stiri	Stiri afaceri	Stiri companii	Evenimente de afaceri

About 2 million people choose black market employment (estimates)

One of the reasons why the registered unemployment rate in Romania has dropped below 6 percent in March, reaching the minimum in the past 12 months, could be expansion of moonlighting, given that the number of employees decreased by 300,000 people last year, and 1.68 million Romanians hold illegitimate jobs, Ziarul Financiar reads.

'It may be that the low unemployment rate is hiding the black market employment. This possibility is not excluded, to the extent as the unemployment rate dropped, but the unemployment rate as measured by opinion poll - which also captures illegal employment - has increased. However, I believe that unemployment rate is caused by the fact that people are not registered as unemployed with the labor employment agencies, once the period when they cash benefits expires', said Nicholae Chidesciuc, Chief economist of ING Bank.

According to the current Labor Code provisions, illegal employment is sanctioned with fines ranging between 10,000 and 20,000 lei (2,400 and 4,760 euros) for each person identified as such - in the case when an employer has fewer than five undocumented workers - but a company cannot be fined more than 100,000 lei (23,800 euros), regardless of the total number of the undocumented employees.

In the first nine months of last year, Labour Inspection has given fines totaling 16.5 million euros, with the largest fines - of 100,000 lei (23,800 euros) each - applied to firms that employed black labor force. Only 11 of the fines given for illegitimate employment in the first nine months of last year had a maximum value of 100,000 lei. In 2009, the total amount of fines charged by the Labour Inspection was 21.7 million euros.

The unemployment rate has reached at the end of March 5.92 percent, declining for the 12th consecutive month. The unemployment rate continued to decline last year, although the number of employees failed to increase. Thus, statistics showed less 225,000 unemployed from March 2010 until March 2011, accompanied by less than 200,000 employees in the period March 2010 until January 2011, when below 4.1 million employees were registered (this being the last month for which the National Institute of Statistics has published information).

Sursa: http://www.actmedia.eu

Tags: employees fines euros march unemployment black million employment people ing