The Job Market Outlook at the Beginning of the Year

The largest online recruitment platform, e-jobs, came, at the beginning of January, with new figures and statistics on the labor market

Luiza Moldovan, 06.02.2024, 17:22

The largest online recruitment platform, e-jobs, came, at the beginning of January, with new figures and statistics on the labor market. According to e-jobs, almost 40% of the jobs posted last year targeted entry-level candidates (between 0 and 2 years of experience), while over 28% targeted candidates with an average level of experience. Only 8.4% of the jobs were addressed to seniors, those with more than 5 years of experience, and 2.6% to managers. In contrast, in 2023, 370,000 jobs were posted on the platform.

Entry-level candidates were not only the most sought after, but they were also the ones who applied the most . More than half of the nearly 12 million applications last year were for what experts call entry-level jobs. For the fourth consecutive year, the 18-24-year-old category remains the second most active age group, not far from first place, occupied by those between the ages of 25 and 35. It is also the segment that had an upward trend in the second half of 2023 compared to the first, while the applications from candidates aged 25-35 had a slight decrease in the other months compared to the beginning of last year. Most entry-level applications were for retail, call-center, services, IT or telecom, banking, tourism, advertising/marketing/PR, and the food industry.

Ana Călugăru, Head of Communications at e-jobs Group, describes the labor market last year as follows:

In 2023 we had a tempering of the labor market, in terms of jobs. We are talking about a decrease of about 12% compared to 2022, we are talking about 370,000 newly posted jobs in the platform, for which almost 12 million applications have been collected. From this point of view, we had an increase of more than 10% in applications compared to 2022. We saw that the most recruitment was in retail, services, outsourced services, construction, tourism. It was a year which, towards the end, put quite a lot of pressure on employers in IT, food, agriculture and construction, because the tax breaks for employers were removed, and this of course will put a financial burden on employers who will not deduct it from the net income of the employees. We haven’t seen the same increases as in 2022, wage increases, but we have seen them for key positions, the employing companies had to increase wages to secure those employees.

In an economy as tumultuous as the current one, forecasts for 2024 lean heavily on caution. Senior employees are in no rush to change jobs, while employers think twice before putting a job on the market. Added to that is their low willingness to allow remote jobs. Ana Călugăru explains:

“For 2024 the year starts in about the same vein as 2023. There is quite a lot of caution in the market from employers, and that’s probably how things will look until the middle of the year; everyone looks at the economic signals to see exactly what moves they can make. No one wants to take a chance, however they are still hiring, in the first part of January we had over 20,000 jobs posted, so there are opportunities in the market. If we look at the remote jobs, we see the lowest level of them posted in recent years. (…) So employers are no longer so willing to hire remotely. However, candidates are willing to engage in this way, only that the trend in the market is, however, to return to office work.

For 40+ candidates it may take longer this time to find a new job. The offers for them are not pouring in, and if they are thinking about a professional reconversion, the advice of professionals in the field is to be very careful about what decisions they make. In addition, it is possible that, in the new field, they start from a junior position. Here is what Ana Călugăru, Head of Communications at e-jobs Group, says about it:

Those who want to get a job and are over 40 should know that it may take a little longer this year than in previous years to find a job, because there are not as many offers on the market. It can take even half a year to find the right job. If it is about a career reconversion, here, again, a lot of patience will be needed, to orient themselves well enough towards the field they want to choose, and to understand that it is possible that they start from a junior position. Of course, they should always pay attention to what new jobs appear on the market.