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Survey:74 pct of managers think labour shortage is more likely than higher inflation
Three quarters of managers surveyed in a CONFIDEX survey on confidence in the economy, conducted by Impetum Group, believe that a labour crisis is more likely than a rise in inflation and more and more are counting on an increase in public and private investment.
After the pandemic, the conflict in Ukraine, the energy and commodity crises, although there is still a lot of uncertainty in the economy, managers are increasingly optimistic and relaxed, a sign of maturity and lessons learned from the experiences of the last three years. The CONFIDEX index has reached its highest level ever, namely 50.2, Impetum Group said in a press release sent on Tuesday.
According to the survey, managers' optimism is based on the resilience and maturity developed in recent years. Managers are worried about things that are happening today, but optimistic about the future and have more confidence in their own strengths. For the first time, CONFIDEX highlights the orientation of Romanian managers towards export and foreign markets.
Confidence in the capital market is also increasing. Three times more Romanian managers believe that the stock market will grow.
In the next period, twice as many managers expect an increase in public investment (41% compared to 24% of managers in 2022) as well as private investment (28% compared to 12% of managers in 2022). At the same time, only 21% of managers (compared to 43% in 2022) still believe that GDP will decrease.
"The labour crisis comes from two areas: we have an acute shortage of skilled labour and we have jobs that Romanians don't want and there is no one to do them. The two crises overlap, as they did many years ago in the West, and they are putting pressure on Romanian managers. A first need of the Romanian business environment is real support from the authorities to manage this labour crisis. We can do this both through internal resources, by increasing the percentage of the population that is active in the labour force, to reach the European average (69% Romania compared to 75% EU), and by relaxing immigration procedures for professions that are not attractive to Romanians (from 100,000 work permits annually to at least 300,000)," said Andrei Cionca, CEO Impetum Group.
More than 3,000 Romanian managers have responded in the eight stages of the survey so far. The responding companies total more than 150,000 employees. The CONFIDEX S1 2023 survey answers cover a sample of more than 500 companies in the top 6 economic sectors contributing to GDP: agriculture; industry and electricity; construction; trade; transport, distribution, warehousing; services. Only entrepreneurs, CEOs and C-level managers responded to the survey, and of the companies covered, 75% have more than 1 million EUR turnover and 31% more than 5 million EUR turnover.