Labour Force Mobility And Employment Crisis In Health Care Sector In Romania

The economic crisis affected the size and quality of employment in most economic and social activities, but in different proportions. The health care sector faced a lower dynamics of employment diminution, but the personnel flows to better paid jobs continued at a higher rate than before the crisis. The failure of some countries to create quality jobs in the public health system caused the migration of specialists to the private sector or other countries. A factor that intensified the flows was the severe austerity policy in the public sector during the crisis, consisting mainly of layoffs and wage diminution. Such anticrisis measures, in cases like Romania, were uniformly taken for the whole personnel paid from the state budget, without taking into account the lasting deficit in employment (in absolute number, but mainly structurally, by specialties) in fields such as health and education. We intend to present in this paper the main features of the mobility of the medical personnel (focusing on the physician brain drain) and the impact on the human capital and the labour market in Romania. We further identify several political measures to retain specialists in the country of origin and to create quality jobs.