About 6 in 10 Romanians fear income will not keep pace with rising prices

 About 6 in 10 Romanians fear that their incomes will not keep pace with price increases and that they will not be able to cope financially, according to an eJobs sociological survey released on Thursday.The second biggest fear is socio-political instability, mentioned in 42.2% of responses. 37.3% fear they will not be able to find a new job and 18.5% fear they will lose their emotional balance. Other aspects that generate anxiety in this period among Romanians are the prospect of losing their job, the impossibility to get out of the depressing state they find themselves in or the fact that they will not solve their personal problems."Most of the problems Romanians are facing these days are related to their professional life. Either they don't earn enough for the needs they have, or they have a job that doesn't offer them stability, or they have lost the job they had or, on the contrary, they work too much and have reached a point where they feel overwhelmed and exhausted. In fact, 50% of respondents say that 2025 is off to a bad start and that they have no hope that things will turn around by the end. Words such as 'uncertainty', 'worry' or 'loneliness' appear frequently in respondents' answers when asked about their current emotional state. Specifically, 45% feel a strong sense of uncertainty, 46.5% are worried about the future, 17.8% have lost their emotional balance, 17% are depressed, and 15% feel lonely. Only 15.1% are optimistic and 2.3% feel that they have finally found their equilibrium," Raluca Dumitra, head of Marketing at eJobs, the Romanian online recruitment platform, was quoted as saying in a press release.Only 26.4% say that, in the past year, they have felt the need for specialized psychological help or therapy. Of those who have felt this need, only 40% have taken the next step and sought counseling. 36.8% paid for this service out of their own resources, while 3.4% had therapy as a benefit offered by the company they worked for. The 60% who did not seek counseling, although they felt the need, justified their decision by the fact that it was too expensive a service they could not afford, that they did not feel comfortable discussing their problems with a stranger or that they feared that they might be judged by strangers.At the same time, 12.4% of those surveyed have psychological counseling on their list of perks. 51% do not have, but would like to, while 36.6% say they do not have, but would not use this perk if their employer implemented it. Also, less than a quarter of respondents believe that managers in the company they work for are genuinely interested in the emotional health of their employees.In relation to the stressors they experience at work, after the salary being too low for their current needs, most complain that they work too hard and are exhausted, that their employer does not accept remote work, that they have a tense or even conflicted relationship with their manager and that they fear they could lose their job.The survey was conducted in April 2025 on a sample of 1,974 respondents.