|
Romania LABOR
Distribution by Economic Sectors
A prerequisite for rapid economic growth after World
War II was
the wholesale transfer of labor from agriculture, which
had
employed 80 percent of the population before the war, to
other
sectors--primarily to heavy industry. The industrial work
force
grew by an average of 5 percent per year during the
1950-77 period,
as Romania was accomplishing its most dramatic economic
development, and industrial output was rising by an
average 12.9
percent annually. As late as 1960, 65 percent of the labor
force
was still engaged in agriculture, with only some 15
percent working
in industry and 20 percent in other sectors. But in the
course of
the following two decades, the labor force would be
transformed, as
peasants left the land in the wake of agricultural
collectivization
to take better-paid jobs in the cities. Between 1971 and
1978, the
outflow of rural labor accelerated to 11 percent per
year--more
than twice the rate of the 1950s and 1960s.
By 1980 agriculture employed no more than 29 percent of
the
labor force, while industry occupied 36 percent and other
sectors
the remaining 35 percent. By this time the rural exodus
had slowed,
and although half the population continued to reside in
rural
areas, the reserves of able-bodied young men in
agriculture had
been reduced drastically. As a result, targets for
expansion of the
industrial labor force were unattainable, and agriculture
was
becoming the domain of the elderly and women (see
table 5,
Appendix).
Data as of July 1989
|
