The unemployment rate in Romania

The unemployment rate is the share of the unemployed in the active population, by the criteria of the International Labour Office (ILO). It is the definition used internationally, which is what makes the figure comparable with other countries'.

It is not the same thing as the registered unemployment rate at the employment agencies. That one counts the people who have entered the records and who meet the legal conditions; the ILO rate counts, through a survey, everybody who has no job, is available to start work and is actively looking. The two figures usually differ a great deal, and the registered rate is appreciably lower.

The survey it rests on, AMIGO, is carried out quarterly, in households. The monthly figures are estimates derived from it by econometric methods, disseminated by INS as provisional data and revised periodically as new information arrives. The series here is the seasonally adjusted one, from which the pattern that repeats year after year has been removed.

The data published for 2004–2008 are not comparable with those that follow; the 2009–2020 stretch was recalculated by INS to reflect the definitions in force from 2021.