Despite the efforts of the authorities, informal employment remains a serious problem, limiting the development of the economy and the social security of citizens. According to the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), the share of people with informal employment amounted to 17.3% of total employment.
The highest level of informal employment traditionally remains in agriculture (especially seasonal work), construction and services (HoReCa, household repairs). The largest share of employees working only on the basis of verbal agreements is estimated in agriculture (56.5%), construction (12.5%), trade (11.3%) and industry (1.6%).
Informal employment in the agricultural sector as a whole amounted to 61.0% and in the non-agricultural sector to 10.2%. The largest share of people employed informally in non-agricultural activities was recorded in construction (49.0% of total employment in construction). Of the people employed informally, wage earners accounted for 28.2%.
Salary “in envelopes”
The practice of partial payment of official wages and partial payment of unofficial wages remains widespread, which distorts the real income statistics in the country. The average official salary for the economy in the IV quarter of 2025 amounted to 16,355 lei.
According to the NBS data, out of the total number of employees – 5.7% had informal employment and at the same time received salaries “in envelope”, with the largest share of them being employed in agriculture (58.0%), construction (12.6%) and trade (9.9%).
Partial employment
The number of partially employed persons amounted to 12.9 thousand people, which is 1.7% of the total number of employed persons. Such calculations of official statistics refer to the category of persons working less than the normative working hours for economic reasons or due to the impossibility to find a full-time job, and reflect the low share of forced part-time employment against the background of the overall reduction of the labor force
The NBS also provides information on the sentiment of survey respondents. Of those in employment, 7.5% said they would like to change their current job situation for a variety of reasons. For most of them, the main reason is unsatisfactory income/salary level.
