Within the current environment where some EU countries, including Romania, as a member state, aim both to consolidate public finances and to rebalance their economies, we consider that more attention needs to be paid to interactions between public wages and employment. In this context, the aim of this article is to analyse the employment and wages in the public sector, as well as the public-private sector wage gap, in Romania, in the 2008-2017 period. The dynamics of the number of employees and salaries in the public sector was affected by the modification of legislation which in turn was influenced by the macro-economic conjuncture and the current political context. Our results highlight significant wage gaps and still widening, on the one hand, between public and private sector in favour of public employees, and between activities of public sectors in favour of public administration employees, on the other hand. Romania, as a EU member state, in order to assure sustained public finances in the sustainable development framework, should pay more attention to better aligning public wage to productivity and labour market conditions as well as to achieving fiscal targets set

EMPLOYMENT AND WAGES IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR IN ROMANIA IN THE EUROPEAN CONTEXT