Number of new jobs posted in Q1 down to 75,000, number of applications up to 3 million

The number of new jobs posted since the beginning of the year has fallen by almost 10% compared to the same period last year, to 75,000 jobs, with almost a third of these coming from retail employers, according to eJobs.The second most active employer in the first quarter was services, with 10,000 jobs posted, while call-center/BPO ranked third, followed by travel, food and construction."Tourism is a sector that has soared up the rankings in the last month since recruitment for the warm season began. We see here not only more jobs posted by Romanian employers, but also by those from abroad. One indicator that has been watched with interest by everyone in the first quarter has been the evolution of the number of jobs in the construction and food industry, after the removal of the facilities for employers in these sectors at the end of last year. There were, at that time, prospects of a decrease in the number of new jobs, but the figures for the first three months show that we are still talking about two industries with high volumes of employment. Together, they have brought more than 15,000 jobs to the market," said Bogdan Badea, CEO of eJobs.ro, according to a statement from the recruitment platform.The lowest need for staff was in domains such as sports/beauty/spa, media, pharma and insurance.The distribution of jobs shows that only 8.7% of them are still remote, and 4.2% are for abroad. 87.1% are jobs for which employers require office presence.Bucharest continues to hold the largest pool of opportunities for those who want to get a job, with half of the jobs posted being for Bucharest and Ilfov. The ranking continues with Cluj (with 13,000 jobs), Iasi (12,000), Timi?s (9,000) and Brasov (8,500). The companies in Neamt, Ialomita, Arges and Braila recruited the least.While in terms of jobs there was a decrease of almost 10% compared to Q1 2023, there was an increase of the same percentage in applications, and the first three months of the year brought more than 3 million applications."There is a proportional relationship that occurs in the labour market - when the supply of jobs contracts, the number of applications increases. When the number of jobs goes up, the level of applications goes down," explained Bogdan Badea.The most active applicants were those in the 25-35 age group, followed by 18-24 and 36-45. The lowest number of candidates was in the 45+ segment.Although employers are no longer as willing as in recent years to have employees working remotely, candidates continue to be attracted by this way of working which allows them more flexibility, the press release said. Thus 13.2% of the total number of applications went to remote jobs. The same is not true for jobs abroad, to which less than 2% of all applications went.Most of the candidates sought jobs in retail, call-center/BPO and services. IT/telecom, banking and construction are the next three areas of preference. On the other hand, textiles, real estate, arts & entertainment and education/training are the areas that attracted the least interest from job seekers.At the moment, more than 23,000 jobs are available on eJobs.ro.According to the press release, the eJobs platform manually checks all ads and companies.