40% of Romanians aged between 45 and 65 are unemployed
The issue of special pensions, intensely debated in the past few days, brings into the spotlight a dramatic fact for a country like Romania: a quarter of Romanians aged between 45 and 65 are not working. Consolidated data reveal an even more dramatic situation: 40% of people aged between 45 and 65 are unemployed.
According to data of the Statistics Institute, out of the 5.2
million people currently aged between 45 and 65 (the retirement age
for men according to the new pension law), 2 million are not
employed. The figure amounts to more than half the number of
Romanian pensioners or half the number of social security
recipients, who last year amounted to nearly 5.5 million. This
compares with 4.3 million employees at the end of last year.
In this light, the discussion of the past few days on the decision
of the High Court of Cassation and Justice to suspend the
recalculation of special pensions of the military, of former police
workers and of former special services workers, is only the tip of
the iceberg. It is not just the 150,000-200,000 special pensions
(for which nearly one billion euros is spent a year) that stifle
the insurance budget, which needs to be subsidised directly and
from the state budget (basically from taxes), but also the general
situation, which can hardly be expected to go on like that.
"Since 1990 we have lost four million jobs. Some of the former
employees left Romania, some receive unemployment benefits, some
simply don't work, and some work on the black market. A solution
would be to start building factories again, because not everybody
can work as a hypermarket employee," believes Vladimir Pasti,
sociologist and political commentator specialising in the study of
political and social developments in the Romanian transition.