Natalia Plougarou
The minister did not specify from whom exactly and from which period these phenomena were inherited, but noted that under the current pro-European government the indicators have become “quite good”:
“We as a country have inherited certain demographic phenomena that we are now trying to fight and solve: the phenomenon of emigration, especially of the labor force, as well as the general decline in the working-age population. This remains a challenge. Nevertheless, over the last four years, especially during the pro-European rule, we have at least quite good indicators. We are talking about the employment rate of the population, which is still low but growing. The employment rate of women has also increased. If we consider only women with children under the age of 10, it has increased by 10 percentage points, from 40% to 50%. It is still very low, but we have a potential labor force that needs to be used,” Plougarou said.
Moldovan “paradox”
According to her, companies feel the shortage of employees acutely: about 20% of them declare that the lack of staff is a serious problem. She also stressed the existence of a paradox: on the one hand, companies cannot find employees, and on the other hand, there is a significant unused labor potential.
“How do we solve this paradox or at least reduce it through measures and the new program of employment and the fight against undeclared labor that we are now developing? For the next four years of the board we have a rather ambitious goal: to attract at least 100 thousand people to the labor market, which means about 25 thousand employed annually,” said Natalia Plugaru.
In order to achieve this goal, the budget for active measures to promote employment was significantly increased from 36 million lei per year to 160 million lei this year. The authorities claim that this increase reflects a firm determination to stimulate employment and reduce shadow employment.
At the same time, the minister drew attention to the need to improve working conditions, noting that the occupational injury rate remains high compared to the European average.
What the statistics say
It is worth noting that, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, the number of economically active population decreased from 889.1 thousand people in 2024 to 805 thousand in 2025.
As Logos Press has already written, the number of the population with permanent residence in Moldova on January 1, 2025 was about 2.4 million people, which is 42 thousand less (or 1.7%) compared to the beginning of the previous year. Compared to 2019, the country’s population decreased by more than 260 thousand people by 2025.
