Education, Economic Growth and Unemployment: Evidence from Romania

The research aims at determining if there is any the correlation between the economic growth, education and unemployment. Thus, we used three econometric models in order to measure the influence total expenditures on education has on the GDP per capita level as well as the dependence between the GDP per capita and education level, or to analyse the correlation between the GDP per capita, the level of education, total costs of education and the unemployment rate. The results of the research emphasize the fact that one of the main factors influencing the level of training is the human factor. Thus, increasing the level of total expenditures for education and also increasing the share of people aged 15-64 years who have completed upper secondary education level (ISCED 3-4) in total population is a reason for gaining a larger stability on labour market contributing to reducing unemployment and increasing the GDP per capita. In treating interdependencies between the mentioned macroeconomic variables, we took into account the availability of data series for a number of years (2002-2016), the empirical values expressed in real terms and caution in interpreting the results due to co-linearity between factorials involved in econometric models. The data associated with variables is forming time series. The model describing the interdependence between GDP per capita and the three factorials is the linear regression function and the method used for computing is the least-squares method.